Slayer Magic
by Perfect Lionheart
Summary: After Halloween, it turns out nobody's costume left anything significant over. However, that doesn't mean they didn't wish it had. Also, in the backlash of all of that chaos magic, that doesn't mean there wasn't magic to be found.
1. Chapter 1

Slayer Magic  
Chapter One

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

In all fairness, Dogbertcarroll dared me to do it.

OoOoO

The rattle of a crowbar hitting the floor as the busted lock on a back door finally yielded to its efforts rang through the empty shop.

"What are we doing here?" a plaintive female voice called, sounding uncomfortable.

"I killed over ten thousand demons last night, Willow," a young man stepping through the door wearing a cheap Fantastic Four costume of Johnny Storm under an overcoat replied. "According to Giles, the Watcher archives say that slayers only kill about a hundred vamps a year. So, in ONE night, I did more slaying than the slayers have in the past hundred years combined. I think that's worth a peek, to see if it can be repeated."

Willow Rosenberg followed her costume garbed oldest friend into the closed up shop. It was all dark and spooky in a "I'm a store and should be full of people doing business" way.

Xander had paused, taking in a deep, double-lung breath of the shop's dusty air, almost as though he could feel the magic in anticipation. Memories of the night before, as the Human Torch, flying along the length and breadth of California like a jet fighter, incinerating all of the vamps or demons he could see (which, with the ability to sense heat, and know who was just a room temperature corpse waltzing around, was quite a few)...

... it had been amazing!

Willow worried for her friend, as he hadn't taken the costume off since then, not even to eat or bathe. And, since school was due to start in an hour, that meant he was probably going to miss first period or so. "Are you sure..?" she ventured.

"Like I told you, Wills. If there is some mystic-mojo, magic connection I don't want to do anything that could get in the way of restarting this. This costume worked once. If there is any way of restarting that, I'm going to take it, period. End of story."

The young man pivoted to give his companion a disarming grin. "Hey! You like how the Slayer is our own, personal super-heroine. Well, I've got fifty times her kill total, and want to stay on the job. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Willow relaxed slightly and shyly smiled. "No, that's fine."

Privately, Xander could not stop his own smile, still heady over the rush he got out of the memories from last night. It had been a thrill like no other. For one, magnificent evening, he had been invincible. From the moment of "Flame On!" any vampire that touched him died, burned to cinders in the same instant it reached out for him. Then he'd discovered how much of an advantage it could be when you could fly - and your enemies didn't. And, of course, having ranged attack powers when your enemies didn't. Crisping a bunch of very, highly flammable demons, hitting them in a weak area.

It had been a slaughter!

He'd always admired the slayer. She could wrestle with her opponents and look all cool and flashy doing so. But she got maybe one or two performances in a night, if she was lucky, excluding one or two really big battles each year. But she also had slow days where she didn't catch anything. Contrast this with flying across cities at Mach speed instantly flash frying everything demonic he could see!

Last night put everything into a context where she was like a professional wrestler - and he had spent one glorious evening being the entire United States Air Force!

Xander knew he wouldn't need more than a couple extra nights of that to cut back the vamp levels of North America almost down to where people already believed it to be - where they were purely mythical creatures and bogeymen out of fairy tales!

Of course, what Xander *really* wanted was to acquire the powers of Johnny Storm on a permanent basis, and live out the rest of his life as The Human Torch. As someone like that, he could probably put an end to the vampire menace forever!

All the slayer ever seemed to be able to do with her powers was to prevent the problem from getting much worse. She didn't really have a chance to stop the vampires entirely, as there were just too many of them, and they could replace their numbers too fast. So at best all she could do was to keep a limit on their depredations.

But Johnny Storm? There was a person who could incinerate them no matter their numbers, and faster than they could drain new victims.

Jesse could finally be avenged in the only way that truly mattered - by stopping the bloodsucking demons from ever attacking another clueless victim, wiping all of the vampire scum out from off the face of the Earth. It was an ideal Xander hadn't even let himself dream of until last night made it all appear possible. Not only possible, but for one night he'd been DOING IT!

The young man understood totally how he could've become addicted to that in one glorious evening, and gave himself total permission to get another fix, if he could. He was already going to be cherishing those memories for the rest of his life, as it was.

Buffy could live to be ninety and he'd STILL have killed more demons than her!

Oh, yes! Not bad for someone being humiliated in front of jocks, just the other day.

The two teenagers turned as there came a rattle and a crash from the door behind them. Panic was resolved almost as soon as it arose as the fear of being caught was banished by their recognizing the two new interlopers.

"Wow! I didn't know you guys would be here, too!" Amy Madison called cheerfully as she entered the shop wearing a classic witch's costume, wand in one hand and a broom in the other, a black cat darting along between her feet.

Xander's brain locked up as he caught the costume of her companion.

"Bad Xander," Willow tried to hide her jealousy as his eyes riveted to the 'black sorceress in a micro bikini' look that Harmony Kendall was sporting. She slapped him lightly for it, but when he didn't wake up, she sighed, and asked, "What are you doing here?" of Amy, just to have some girl-chat going while waiting for Xander's brain to reboot.

Amy was all smiles as she hefted her broom. "Oh, well the broom this shop sold me stopped working this morning. Since it was fine all of last night, I was hoping they could look at it and maybe fix it? I like flying. It was fun."

The blonde giggled. "It may be the first time I really liked the traditional witch thing."

"Take me, please," Xander whispered, still staring at Harmony.

Willow scowled, as not only was Harmony not bothered by this attention, if anything, she seemed pleased, and preened under his gaze. Seeking to divert this as soon as possible, she told Amy, "You know, I heard the shopkeeper was run out of town last night. But we were hoping to recover any leftover magic he might have left behind."

"You know Amy, that's not a bad idea. You should help. Most people aren't qualified to work with magic, and if the shopkeeper had to be exiled, he was probably working dark magic. There are probably some cursed items lying about."

The very masculine voice speaking up caught everyone's attention, except Xander's, but his gaze still turned somewhat that way as Hamony's very voluptuous bosom turned when she faced that direction.

The reason they were alarmed was because it was Amy's black cat who spoke. "What? You all just revealed you know about magic. Never heard of a witch's familiar before?"

Amy darted in and scooped up her cat. "That's right. I got him last night. Only last night, he was a plushy, and today he is still real. That's why I was hoping they could get the broom working right again. I already have the wand."

She held out the aforementioned object, sparks trailing from its tip in streamers.

"That's great!" Willow clapped her hands, still secretly scheming to draw Xander's eyes away from Harmony's barely-clad bosom. "Do you think you could help us detect any magic that might be left over?"

"I can try." Amy gamely waved her new sparkling wand over the shop in general. "Magic hidden before the eye. Reveal your secrets!"

"Was that a spell?" Willow blinked, then her hair practically stood on end as a wave of magic swept over the shop, leaving several objects lightly glowing.

"It felt right," Amy confessed, clutching her wand to her chest happily.

Once again, Willow fought down a surge of jealousy. This time had a different source. Why was floating pencils so HARD?

"Oooh!"

Willow incidentally got what she'd wanted as Xander's head shook in sympathy to the jiggling bosom that vanished out from before his eyes, leaving him to blink as Harmony disappeared around a corner to where she'd caught a glimpse of something in the staff only areas of the shop.

"Looks like someone was being naughty," said the cheerleader dressed as an evil sorceress as she lifted up a stack of papers from the printout tray of a softly glowing photocopier.

"Money?" Amy joined in oogling the sheets of twenty dollar bills that Harmony was picking up. They were all cut and neatly stacked by hundreds and everything.

Willow came scurrying after. "I thought they put a chip in those machines so they wouldn't copy cash?"

"This one just did," Harmony reported smugly, now loading ream after ream of cash bundles into her cloak, where they just vanished. As she was finishing up, she said, "Oh, look. The machine's light is blinking. It says it wants more paper."

Happily, the cheerleader added a new ream, and the reloaded copier began printing more.

"Do you know why the machine detects as magic?" Willow asked.

"No clue, don't care," Harmony happily replied, before fanning one stack of bills. "Although, these all have different serial numbers." The young lady cheerfully began humming to herself, already loading more paper in, incidentally covering up as her cloak, the only significant stretch of fabric in her entire costume, pooled around her as she leaned forward.

This caused Xander's eyes to catch on to something he'd missed. "Hey! Your cloak is glowing!" he accused.

"Uh huh!" Harmony cheerfully replied. "Like Amy, I'm here to find out if the shopkeeper can get me up to full power again. The outfit works fine, magical protection, perfect temperature all of the time, and a cape that holds dang near anything - It's like a purse that holds more than my dad's car! It also came with a free boob job, and a cool nip and tuck. Only last night I was blowing up monsters faster than Cordelia goes through money on a shopping spree, and I *liked* it! So I want to do more of it. So I came back to the shop to see if they could restart whatever it was they did."

"So, we're all here for the same reasons!" Amy announced, holding her cat, who agreed.

"Looks that way, Amy."

CLANG!

Every eye turned to where Willow had jumped back from a sword that was now stuck firmly into the floor, nearly up to its hilt. "I'm sorry!" she babbled, "I saw this Halloween costume with that was like, armor, and it had this glowing sword. I was only just going to touch it, and then it sprang away from me, and it stuck in the floor. And I don't know how it did that, or why, but it startled me, and..."

"Breathe, Willow," Xander was back nurturing his friend.

"Whoso pulleth forth this sword from this stone is rightwise king of all England," Amy read from the few inches of blade that was all that was left between the hilt and the ground.

"Well, it seems like someone wasn't worthy," her cat exclaimed.

Xander couldn't resist, and gave it a few experimental tugs, not truly surprised when he couldn't get it to budge in the least. After him, Amy gave it a try, then Harmony gave it a hefty pull.

CRASH!

"I'm so sorry!" Willow blurted, secretly not sorry at all, now that Xander's vision had turned away from the heaving bosom of Harmony as she'd strained at drawing the sword, to the rack of clothes she'd just knocked over.

"Oh look, a Wonder Woman costume is glowing," Harmony left her fruitless efforts straining at the sword to pick up the swimsuit-style garment, slipping into it unselfconsciously right there in front of them.

Though she didn't remove the first costume to do it, and the Wonder Woman outfit was only like a swimsuit itself, it was as though she had covered up, because the superheroine costume covered about a thousand times as much skin as her evil sorceress one.

Xander looked unhappy at the change. Glancing at the counter he spied a forgotten multitool that, when he picked it up, actually turned into any tool, from a pipe wrench, to bolt cutters, a magnifying glass, then a weight scale, through a carpentry hammer to scissors.

He pocketed it.

"Hmm, not bad," the cheerleader bounced on her toes, then did some stretches. "I think this suit has some sort of magical athletic boost. It's not much, but it's there."

"I found some more wands, only they won't work for me," Amy said.

"Those are both copies of Harry Potter's wand," Willow came over to have a look, and told her. "And in that series, 'the wand chooses the wizard'."

"Well, they don't seem to like this witch," Amy sighed, putting them down. "On the plus side, one of those costumes came with a nifty candy bag in the shape of a trolley with his trunk and owl cage on it. Since the bird is real, there might be a bag of real gold coins inside that mess of a trunk."

Willow couldn't seem to resist trying the wands both herself.

No sparks.

"Hey! I found the bracers that went with the Wonder Woman costume!" Harmony cried.

"Do they work?" Amy's cat asked.

"Don't know. No way of knowing, and I'm not going to look for a way to test them, either."

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Everybody turned to where Harmony had just knocked over a pile of canes. The one in her hand had a sword halfway drawn out of it. One of the ones on the floor had just shot off half a hundred rounds before running out of ammunition. "Uh, hi? Spoke too soon?" she said sheepishly, still holding onto the cane with the half-drawn blade. "I found this nifty sword-cane, but it looks like one of the ones that dropped was someone's concealed machinegun. And, yes, the Wonder Woman bracelets? They work."

"There's another in this violin case over here. No ammo," Xander announced, disapproving.

He still took it anyway.

SWOOSH!

Everyone looked towards the distinctive sound, where Willow had just activated a lightsaber, only to sigh in disappointment as she made an experimental swing at the counter and it didn't do anything. "That's all it is," she sighed, having made the barest of touches on the blade with the tip of one finger, "Light."

"I found some winged sandals - only they don't fly!" Amy reported, and true enough, the tiny wings on the heels of her new footwear flapped valiantly, but didn't go anywhere.

"I've got a set of pokeballs, but they're empty," Xander's voice floated out of his own explorations of the costume racks.

"They probably only hold pokemon," Amy sighed. "Otherwise that could be grand."

"I'll just have to try 'em out on Angel and see." The grin could be heard in Xander's voice.

"Bad Xander." Willow scolded. "You'd have to knock him out first. And then Buffy would be lonely."

"Here are some glowing paint cans. I don't know what they do, though," Harmony spoke from the back of the shop, where she was, once again, reloading the copier.

"I could swear I just saw a man's hairpiece hide under a counter," Amy's cat told everyone.

"I always thought some of those looked like they moved on their own, like they were alive, or something," Amy mused while she inspected a beautiful ball gown. "Hey! This is, like, a princess costume or something!"

Willow scowled, but also drew in on herself, looking sad. "I wouldn't put it on. Buffy had one of those on last night, and she got beaten nearly to death, and almost raped. She's in the hospital today. It was really awful."

"Oh." Suddenly Amy's enthusiasm for the costume just died.

"I found a magic bat with these baseball costumes," Xander offered by way of distraction. "Tag says it is +1, +3 vs small, flying objects."

"Pad of receipts and a label maker behind the register are enchanted. Don't ask me what they do, though," Amy announced.

Laughter came from the employee area. "Check out the bathroom! The 'porcelain throne' has become the real deal! Gold leaf and everything. I'm going to have to find a real toilet soon, though. This doesn't have a hole in the middle anymore for its usual function, and that padding looks expensive. I'd hate to get it wet."

Willow spotted something that was enough to reignite her enthusiasm. "Hey! This is a Star Trek phasor!" Snatching it up, she scowled. "Oh. Batteries not included."

"I've found a wig for Wednesday Addams," Amy told everyone in a dull monotone while wearing the device. "All it seems to do is make me speak like this."

"I just found a Book of Exalted Deeds. Anybody a cleric?" Harmony called out. "Oh, no, wait. It's written entirely in Thieves' Cant. Then there's this Libram of Silver Magic written entirely in troll. Either one do any of you any good?"

They all met gazes. "Nooo."

"Bummer. Oh! Look! Here are a bunch of textbooks for a nerdy college geek costume that are all glowing, but they're all For Dummies. If those work like other magic books, I bet just about anybody could jump to the top of the grade curve if they read them."

"Dibs on the Home Ec for Dummies," Amy replied.

"You can have that. I'm going after Economics and Business for Dummies," Harmony told everyone, emerging from the stacks carrying a backpack full of books, handing one to Amy and keeping hold of the two she'd mentioned.

"Xander needs the one for Math," Willow admitted.

"Hey! Look everybody! I found a magic lamp!" Xander emerged bearing aloft his own prize, recently liberated from an Arabian themed set.

Without waiting for counsel, he rubbed it excitedly, astonishing everyone when a misty form emerged and began to coalesce into a clearly recognizable human form, bald with an earring and posing with arms crossed across his mighty chest. Then, with a massive swish of both air and magic, everything in the whole shop was spotless, including the four teens. Then, trash picked up, stains removed, clothes washed and the wood and tile all nicely polished, the man of mist returned to his bottle.

Xander just stared at the bottle. "Figures I'd get a genie lamp holding Mr. Clean."

"Dude, I could *so* use that around the house," Amy announced, wide-eyed.

"If you find Mr Tidy Bowl, I want to see him yacht around," Harmony teased.

"Uhm, I found a playboy bunny costume that glows." Willow shyly admitted. "Oh, look! There's an Unnatural Axe!"

"Unnatural acts?" Harmony as well as Amy and her cat all echoed dubiously.

"Axe." Xander spelled it. "It's from a card came about killing monsters. And yes, it's all over spikes and grins at people when you swing it at them. It's cool!" he declared.

Willow emerged bearing the weapon, or rather dragging it behind her, as it stood taller than the girl dragging it, and had to weight over a hundred pounds. And yes, it didn't look natural at all. "It came from a munchkin costume display," she offered.

"Pity more of that costume didn't work," Xander breathed aloud in wonder, as anyone who could swing THAT at a monster wasn't to be toyed with!

"I found a man's overcoat," Harmony had emerged from the backroom and was searching through the piles. "I thought it was from a flasher costume, but every time I open it up, well, see for yourself."

She held open the coat, showing that the inside surface of the jacket was hung with dozens of watches. Then she slapped it closed and opened it again, and this time it was hung with event tickets. Next time was mobile phones, then other jewelry. Each time she flipped the coat open it was something different.

"A, ah, uh, street vendor's coat," Amy offered dubiously.

"Yeah, but you have to shove cash in the pockets before you can remove anything." The girl holding the coat did not approve, but pursed her lips. "Still, everything but the event tickets comes at a substantial discount."

There came a crash from out of the back room, and they all rushed back to see Xander fighting with a stuffed purple dinosaur. Once he had its mouth taped shut with a roll of duct tape wrapped around its muzzle several times, he panted, "Sorry. It started to sing. Oh, would you look at that?"

And with that he picked up a deck of cards out of the lost and found that flashed and filled the whole room with light from the moment he first touched it. Amy was forced to cancel the spell that let them see magic auras before they could blink spots from their eyes in the sudden darkness.

Willow found a light switch a moment later.

"Most of the deck is like a solid block of iron," Xander announced to the group, holding the mass of cards in one hand, turning the immobile lump over and over without budging it. "But some of the cards came free in my hand."

He looked at what he had, then smiled. "Sweet!"

Immediately the lad began to reload paper into the copier, flipping open the top to take out the twenty dollar bill that lay there, and place in one of those cards, face-down.

"What are you doing? That was money!" Harmony objected.

"So are these," Xander showed off the cards he held proudly. "Some of the ones in my hand are worth hundreds of bucks. Hey, is this machine broken, or something?"

He bent to examine why it had only turned out three cards.

Harmony rolled her eyes. "Obviously you've not used a copier before. They can sense fear. Here, let me try it with another card." She handed him back the original he'd copied.

Xander passed her another card without looking at it, before deciding that having four Mox Diamonds was worth doing a Snoopy Happy Dance over.

"Huh, there are still only four, one original, three copies," Amy was watching over Harmony's shoulder as the copier produced exactly three more cards. "Could it be something about the cards? Here, try to copy a page out of this book."

She passed over the For Dummies book she held, which Harmony placed on the scanning plate open to a random page. Only to be shocked when it triggered, to have a whole book fall out into the printout rack, followed by another identical copy of the whole book. Then the 'needs paper' light came on.

"It copied everything." Willow shook her head in amazement, reading over the blonde witch's shoulder as Amy compared the copied books to the original. A quick spell just on the books revealed they were just as magic as the original.

"Ok, new plan," Willow told the group. "We all get our own copies of the textbooks. If they do anything like what they should, we all get perfect grades, and I can do more research into the supernatural in the time I save from study."

Xander had just turned to tell her what a great plan that was when one of the mox diamond cards fell from out of his hand to land face-up on the floor.

An instant surge of light had everyone blinking again.

"What was *that*?" Amy demanded, she and everyone else shielding her face from the glare with her arm.

"It's demanding that I discard a land or I don't get the diamond," Xander replied in wonder. His face paled. "Holy magic playing cards, Batman! You mean that deck is REAL?"

"Well, if you don't want the diamond, I'll certainly take it." Harmony tried to pluck the card up off the floor, only to fail just as badly as she had at drawing Excaliber. "What's wrong?"

Xander had searched hurriedly through the remaining cards in his hand. "I don't have any land cards! Doesn't that mean I should get a redraw, or something?"

"Not if you've already played a card. It's too late," Amy, who'd played a bit with her dad, who was something of a nerd about the game, told him regretfully.

Xander lunged to the copy machine, tossing out the couple of For Dummies books to retrieve the cards under them. "Yes! I've got a land!" Plucking out one of the four island cards laying on the copier, he announced, "I'll use this one to pay for mox diamond."

The flash of light surged, then was over just as quickly, leaving everyone blinking at spots once again. As they cleared, everyone could tell the island card was missing from Xander's hand, and around his neck was a beautiful piece of jewelry with a diamond that had to weigh in at something like sixty carats.

Harmony was instantly at the young man's side, drawing imaginary circles on his chest. "I'm sure I can think of something to give you that you'd like more than that silly diamond."

The young man gulped. "As much as I'd like to agree with you, games played with these cards share a lot in common with the Highlander show. They're both about a Gathering, and for each, the victory statement can truly be summed up as 'In The End, There Can Be Only One', as in, one survivor. That said, sure! I'd love to..."

"Bad Xander!" Willow swatted him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Ouch!" the boy rubbed his nose. "It's just as well," the young boy sighed, struggling with the necklace. "I can't seem to take it off." Addressing Harmony, he asked, "Are you looking for a roguishly handsome jewelry stand to come with your new necklace? Ow! Ow! Quit it!"

Willow relaxed into a ready position from her swatting. "No agreeing to die," she ordered sternly. "If you're going to play, you're going to win. No giving away important resources."

"Yes, ma'am," he meekly acquiesced. He'd crossed a line with that one, and knew it. Jokes about death were one thing, actual flirting with it another.

"Look, you've got three more of those cards, and more islands. Perhaps you could work it out so we are wearing some of the next diamond necklaces?" Amy asked.

Several islands later, four diamonds hung around Xander's neck, but no one had thought of any way that he could part with one for any of the girls.

"Well, what other cards have you got?" Amy demanded.

Xander read aloud, "I've got a Prodigal Sorcerer, White Knight, Ivory Tower, Library of Alexandria, Serra Angel and the card I think I drew at the start of this turn is called Ancestral Recall. I know some of these are worth major bucks, but I haven't played since my dad pawned my collection for beer money. And... shutting up now," the boy blushed as he realized what he'd admitted.

"Well," Amy shrugged, "You might as well play the Library of Alexandria, since you haven't played a land yet this round."

"Wait!" Harmony commanded, intercepting the card selected before Xander could put it down. "Copy it first. If these things are your tools as part of a 'live or die' struggle, then more is always better, yeah?"

Three gazes locked on each other, then it was over to the copier.

"You know, I think I've figured out why we can only make you three copies of each," Amy offered. "Because in Magic, you are only allowed to have four of any card in a deck."

Xander stared at the block of cards in his hand. "You mean I've got a deck made up of who knows how many cards, and each one is different? That can't be optimized!"

"Cheer up, Xander! It's probably working out better for you this way." Amy told him just as the mistress of the copy machine turned over four cards back to the boy. "I mean, who else gets four mox diamonds out on their first turn?"

"That's true." The boy sagged in relief. "Mana starved, I am not."

"Mana?" Amy's pet cat asked.

"The term they use for magical energy in the game," its owner told him. "And it's on an unheard-of scale. An entire island or mountain gives you only one point of mana."

"That type of power would put you among the top-ranked sorcerers of the world," the cat informed Xander boldly.

The young man gulped, then shrugged. "Ok, well, maybe I'll take this as second place over getting to be Johnny Storm again. It's got to have uses, right? Actually, from what I recall those weeks I played, I can call up whole armies with this stuff, right?"

"If you get the right cards, sure," Amy told him.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Dogbertcarroll put up a story that I though had absolutely fantastic possibilities in one direction, and when I told him so he confessed his plans lay in another, then invited me to use my ideas in my own story.

I don't know for how long I've said to picky reviewers, "if you don't like it, write your own", and, well, money where my mouth is time, here I am doing it.

The aim is probably for this to be a fairly short story. At first I was thinking only five chapters. It may go longer, but I'm not sure, and certainly not much longer in any case.


	2. Chapter 2

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Two

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

"So, what should I do now?" Xander looked over his hand of cards. "I am thinking I should summon something."

"Play the library first," Amy advised. "It's got a powerful special ability that lets you draw a new card once you have exactly seven in your hand. Drawing new cards is always helpful, if you can arrange it."

Xander obediently laid down one of his four Libraries of Alexandria, and the teens felt a rush of wind. Glancing out the back door revealed that the entire block behind them had been replaced by an enormous building several stories tall, and as big around as some college campuses, while the building style itself screamed 'classic' in a way that reeked of money.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Xander whistled.

"What have you got in your hand right now?"

"Ancestral Recall, plus Prodigal Sorcerer, White Knight, Ivory Tower, three more Libraries of Alexandria, and Serra Angel," the boy obediently answered, feeling a bit out of his depth, but willing to joke about it. "How can four copies of the same library help, anyway?"

"More copies, in case some are checked out," Willow volunteered.

"Actually," Amy's cat interrupted. "It's a bit of nearly forgotten history, but there were once five great libraries in the ancient world almost exactly like Alexandria. The other four were at Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome and Constantinople. Alexandria was for a while the biggest and most famous, but they all had impressive collections. In fact, it was a few scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople in 1453 with the handful of books they could carry who kicked off the Renaissance, because they ran into a guy in Venice who was playing around with this new thing called a printing press, and he thought 'hey, let's try printing some of these', and the knowledge spread and kicked off the Enlightenment. But it was only a fragment of the whole collection that got out before the sack of Constantinople, and due to the difficulty of travel in those days, the five Great Libraries didn't exactly share books, except by accident. Even multiple copies of the same chronicle often had sections added by different authors. So it's entirely probable that you could land several enormous collections of ancient or lost books with very little overlap or duplicated material."

Willow's eyes came alight and sparkled, drooly in a way that most girls looked at boys.

Amy was frowning while Harmony fiddled with the copy machine, printing more cash. "To do this right, we've got to get you at exactly seven cards, so you can use the library to get one more. The game is all about speed. Whoever gets the most stuff out fastest, usually wins."

"Well, then I'll play this one!" Xander announced, holding out a card which flashed into brilliant white light, as though it were the bulb of a spotlight.

"No!" Amy threw up one arm to shield her eyes, sending out the other to grab him.

"Stop!" Willow lunged forward, eyes closed, relying on her Xander-sense to find him, and wrapped herself around his middle.

"What?" Xander, though shielding his eyes from the incandescent white card, appeared genuinely puzzled by the trio of girls lunging at him to stop his rash act.

"We want to keep you alive, and this game is like a puzzle," Amy told him as soberly as she could holding a For Dummies book between her eyes and that card. "Do all of the right things, in the wrong order, and you'll lose to a better player - and since we have no idea who you are playing *against*..." she trailed off and let him fill in her meaning.

"No Dying," Willow insisted seriously, pointing to the cheeks of her face now buried in his chest to spare her eyes. "Resolve face on."

"No playing anything before I copy it," Harmony ordered for her own part, edging forward with her head turned away, plucking the activated and brightly glowing card out of his fingers to run it through her copier, then wincing as the glow only brightened. "Okay," she quickly figured out the problem. "Now we have four cards all bright like they're only an inch from the sun. Why are they all glowing like that?" She handed the four back to Xander. "They're like solid shards of light. I'm actually a little impressed my machine could copy them."

"Your machine?" Xander asked.

"Yes," Harmony repeated with a grin, through you couldn't see it for all of the blinding light. "Mine."

"I have no idea why they are so bright," Amy admitted, still holding Xander in place with one arm and her book face shield in the other. The boy was afraid to move since his last rash act.

Willow was holding a piece of Xander's shirt over her eyes. "I think I see something. Those diamonds are tools that give mana, right?"

"Yeah, that's correct," Amy admitted. "One of any color mana per diamond. That's special because there are five colors of mana in the game, and getting the right types in the right amounts can be hard, especially if other people can destroy your land - which is one of the classic strategies. The mox series of jewels came out early, and were so good they never got reprinted. Other versions got issued that weren't nearly so good."

"Well, two of the diamonds are dark around Xander's neck, and the other two are shining. I am guessing that whatever card he just activated cost two?"

"That's probably true," the blonde witch allowed, "but I'm currently keeping my eyes shut, hoping not to go blind."

"Well, in that case, I'd say he paid for the card before Harmony copied it, and we got four paid-for cards once she duplicated it. That's my best guess anyway," Willow concluded, shoving her face back into the dark refuge of Xander's chest as she did so.

"Well, Xander, there doesn't appear to be any way to back out of whatever, so you might as well play the card and spare our eyesight," Amy instructed.

The light suddenly dropped down to normal levels.

"All of a sudden I feel real good about myself," Xander admitted in wonder.

"I'm suddenly ashamed at what I've been wearing." Harmony grabbed a trenchcoat off the costume racks and covered up.

Willow just stood blinking at her own changes.

It was Amy's cat that finally answered for them all. "I'd say it looks like he played the White Knight card."

"Yeah. I'd say he did," Amy agreed, staring at the white armored gauntlets on her hands, to the metal boots on her feet, and the breastplate on her chest, all of polished white metal. Xander stood in full, head to toe plate armor. Harmony was in an all-white metal bikini. Hers was the skimpiest, but other girls had similar. Armored bikinis appeared to be the in thing for female knights to wear this season. The swords at their hips also seemed suited to their builds, too. Where Xander's was a hefty claymore, theirs were slender and lightweight.

"What are we?" Harmony asked, bordering on shock.

Amy closed her eyes and recited, almost as though to calm herself, "White Knight, a white creature with power two, toughness two, meaning it causes two damage on an attack, and takes two before dying. Usually that's abbreviated to 'two-two', power always comes first."

"Is lower better, or higher?" Willow asked cautiously.

"Always higher," Amy replied, eyes still closed, seeking a chair.

"Our low numbers do not reassure me," Harmony felt on the verge of panic.

"Two-two is actually pretty good," Amy got a handle on herself and looked around. For all they looked like an artist's rendition of an idealized concept of knights, things could actually be far worse. She found a seat and took it. "A Benalish Hero is another white card that is only a one-one. Lots of wizards are, too. And before you say that's bad, whole units of pikemen or archers or infantry are lumped together, and the whole unit only counts for a single one-one creature. So you have twice the power and toughness of a wizard or hero who themselves is equal to a whole unit of conventional troops."

"But there are stronger things out there, right?" Willow was dreading her answer.

"Loads, unfortunately." Amy answered, deliberately taking deep, calming breaths. "But most of them are monsters: vampires or demons or dragons, or the like. For humans, we are near the top of the scale."

"Still not being reassured here," Harmony whispered, looking ready to faint.

"There are two things I think can of to help out," Amy smiled. "As White Knights, we are one of the best creatures white had during the early years of the game, and we come with two special abilities. One is called First Strike, meaning if we get in combat, the enemy takes all of our damage before we take any from him. So in a fight with something of toughness two or less, you'll kill it all of the way dead before it could even put a scratch on you."

Harmony now breathed deeply in relief. "Feeling better now."

"And the other ability?" Willow could not say whether she'd dreaded to ask.

"It's even better," Amy reassured, now standing and helping Willow to her chair. "Called Protection From Black. Basically, anything black can do, can't hurt you. Their creatures can do no damage to you, they can't stop you when you attack, they can't curse you or basically harm you in any way. There are some funky, special-case exemptions, but that's it for the most part. In most situations, there is simply nothing they can do to harm you."

"And who are the 'they' who can't hurt us?" Willow perked up considerably.

Amy shrugged, tossing her hair out of the way. "Black was the color for undead, demons and vampires and stuff like that, mostly. If it came out of a horror movie, it's black."

Harmony had picked up noticeably. "So horror movie stuff can't hurt us? I like that."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that card doesn't actually summon anything, seeing as, you know, it just changed us, and all," Xander reported, still blinking out spots.

"It's possible they don't, or that being copied altered something," their resident expert on the game replied, then sighed, "Either way, we'd have to guess, as magic photocopiers are not covered in the official rules."

"So we're cheating?" Willow squeaked, afraid of breaking rules.

"If this was a tournament, yes." Amy admitted.

"Yes, well, I'd never played much, but already I can tell you this is nothing like an official game," Xander shifted from one armored foot to another, testing his weight and balance in his new set of armor, somewhat surprised by the strength in his own limbs. "For one thing, in the game you always know who your opponents are, and for another, you can see everything they've got in play. And while I know I am in this until death or victory, I don't have a clue who the enemy players are, only that they are out there, somewhere."

"What's more," he confessed. "I have the oddest feeling that I am only just joining a game that has been going on for a long, long time."

Amy nodded in understanding. "Joining in the middle is another thing that's impossible in an official game, so, since none of the normal rules seem to apply, we won't worry about them. Our focus will be on you staying alive. Hopefully that ignorance works both ways, and we'll have time to get you established before they realize you are here."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Xander agreed amicably.

"How many cards have you got in your hand now?" Willow pressed eagerly, sight restored and anxious to see to it that she didn't lose her oldest friend and companion.

"Seven. I've still got Ancestral Recall, plus Prodigal Sorcerer, Ivory Tower, three more Libraries of Alexandria, and Serra Angel," the now knightly Xander replied.

"Well, that makes it easy. Use the library you've got out to draw another card," Harmony volunteered, just absently repeating the advice that Amy had given earlier while she loaded more paper into her beloved copy machine.

"What is it?" Willow bounced forward to read over his armored shoulder as he drew.

Xander showed her. "Haven't had time to read it, but it says Fastbond."

Amy shook her head in wonder. "You sure are playing with some high power, high cost cards in that deck. That one is an enchantment that lets you play more than one land a turn, only drawback is you take a little damage doing it."

"Copy first!" Harmony plucked the card from out of his grasp before he could do or say anything that might screw with it.

"But wouldn't it be better to pay for it before she makes copies?" Willow inquired.

Amy shook her head. "Not this one. Lots of enchantments are the same whether you have one copy in play, or several. An enchantment usually changes a rule, like 'you no longer die if reduced to zero life', or something - that card is out there, somewhere, and Xander might even have one in that deck of his. But he's got several cards that work better the more cards he keeps in his hand. Since most of what he's got in there are stuff he'd rather play than hold onto, keeping back three copies of Fastbond actually serves him best."

On receiving this advice, Harmony copied the card, then handed them back to Xander.

Amy rubbed her eyes, surprised at how stressful it was leading them by the hand through something that may cost Xander his life if they screwed up. "Okay, you had seven cards, then drew one, which became four. So you have eleven right now, right?"

"Correct," the lone boy responded, being as exact as possible since, you know, his life was on the line and he'd already stepped out into error once by being too rash.

"Alright, pay to cast a Fastbond, then put the other three Libraries of Alexandria into play," she told him. "You'll take a little damage doing it, but it should be nothing you can't handle."

One brilliant flash of green light later, and soon four amazing edifices filled with ancient, lost knowledge stood before them, each in different but impressive classical building styles, and displacing several more blocks of houses. Xander was also wiping a little blood from his cheek. "You know? That was amazingly painful, like getting beat up by a vamp."

"I'm not surprised," Amy told him, sorrowfully. "Most vampires do about three or four points of damage, and you just took three, one each from playing three more land cards than you usually would be able to. But," here she smiled, "Look on the plus side! As a player, you had twenty life to start with, so could spare a little, and now you're back to having seven cards again, so you can activate those three extra libraries to draw new cards!"

"Ironroot Treefolk, Sol Ring and Mox Pearl," Xander announced before anyone could ask. "Can I play the mox pearl? It costs nothing and provides white mana."

"That's a good idea," his instructor admitted.

"Copy first!" Harmony plucked the card out of his hand, and went and did her duplicating.

Moments later four pearls were in play, as well as an equal number of golden Sol Rings. Only this time something different had occurred, in that each girl got one ring and one pearl. Xander had even been able to hand around his extra diamond necklaces. Experiments soon proved he could still use them as mana sources, even while the actual items were in the girls' possession, and yet they could not.

"I'm guessing, since you played those Knight cards and empowered us, we now count as your minions or something and can handle your important magic stuff," Willow surmised.

"Sounds logical," the other witch admitted, still rubbing her head.

"Hey, either way," Harmony told them cheerfully. "Now we've got prize jewelry! Cordelia would have unprotected sex with a roomful of ugly nerds to own a diamond half this size!"

"How much mana could you get if you tapped everything left?" their expert brought the topic back to the present emergency.

Xander considered that vial question for a moment. "Well, I spent two of the mox diamonds on getting the White Knight card out that transformed us, and one more to get out Fastbond. Then I tapped one pearl to get the first Sol Ring. After that I used the rings themselves to get out more of them. That took three mana, so I tapped two rings, the first got two more, then one of those to get out the last. So I have one colorless mana on hand already from the unused half of that second ring, and could have four more from tapping the other two. Add to that, I could tap the remaining three pearls for three white, and I've still got a diamond unused that could grant me one of any color. So, nine mana total: five colorless, three white, one of any."

"With that much we could easily put Serra Angel into play," Amy whistled, impressed. "And she is a very good card to have. She's got a special ability that almost makes her worth two creatures, as she doesn't tap to attack."

"You've lost me in lingo, here," Harmony declared.

"Sorry," Amy recentered herself. "It's just a bit confusing for me, too, relating all of this to real life. Ok, look, here's the deal, for players the cost they pay to do most everything, like cast spells or whatever, is in mana, and mostly mana comes from land. But for creatures like us, who don't control either mana or land, the cost we pay is 'to tap', it's basically just game jargon that says 'you've gone this turn, your effort is spent, you don't get to do anything until the next turn'. Now attacking normally taps a creature, because it takes a lot of effort to go off and storm the beaches of Normandy or take that hill or whatever. And creatures you send off to do that are not also available to guard the home front or man the walls of your castle to repel goblin hoards trying to boil over them. But that's what so special about Serra Angel, she's got this special ability where, to her, attacking is a trivial effort, so she can both attack and block attacks on you simultaneously."

"Uhm," much blinking and wondering what the deal was.

Amy tossed her head. "Ok, picture her leading an assault on Rommel's panzer columns in Africa, and giving that her full effort, her genuine best shot, then being home and still fresh as a daisy in time to defend England in the Battle of Britain that same day, and fighting there just as strongly as though she hadn't been up to her armpits in panzers trying to kill her right before - even if those panzers had done everything short of killing her, she'd still fight at her full capacity against the Luftwaffe, at full health and ready to do it all over again. That's the scale we are talking about here. Serra can participate in both attack and defensive battles at all times. No matter where the fighting, she can be there. She's great! It's always wonderful to have Serra Angel on your side."

There she stopped herself. "Actually, what we need to do, before we decide on how to spend that mana, is to learn exactly what our options are to spend it on, and you've still got Ancestral Recall, which lets you draw more cards. So why don't you use the last diamond to power that, then let Harmony copy it before you play it. That should net you another dozen cards, and we'll at least know what we're working with."

A dozen more cards were drawn, discussed, and debated over.

After the discussion over priorities Amy summed up. "Ok, Xander got lucky by drawing a Stone Calendar, because between four of that, and four each of the three lands he drew, he can afford to cast literally everything in his hand right now, except for the trio of Fastbond spells we had him holding back anyway. And that means when next turn arrives we can photocopy whatever card he draws so he has four of it, that will give him seven cards, which means he'll be able use the Libraries of Alexandria all over again."

"And he has already had a patently absurd first turn," Harmony quipped. "But that will put him well on the way to having an equally silly second one. I love copy machines!"

"We are getting four mana for every one we draw, and casting four spells for the price of one, thanks to that," Willow admitted. "That does make a big difference."

"When you're playing for fun that's one thing. Playing to survive? Take any advantage you can get," the cat advised.

"Right," Amy agreed. "Xander's survival is the issue. He won't get any life from the ivory towers next turn, but he'll get quite a bit out of the Angelic Chorus he is about to play right now, after he puts his land down."

"That... hurt," Xander groaned moments later, looking severely beat up, injured to the point where Willow was so concerned she was thinking of a hospital stay for him.

"I'm not surprised, according to the math you are three-quarters dead, just from playing the extra land this turn," Amy's cat observed.

"He'll get better soon!" Amy held up both hands to block accusations as she reassured them. "All he has to do now is play the angelic chorus card! That gives him extra life equal to the toughness of all of the extra creatures he summons, and he's got a stack of those ready to play! Most of them with loads of toughness. In a few moments, he ought to be better than ever! The four Ironroot Treefolk alone will give him twenty life between them, which is as much as his whole starting amount! But since he is playing four of those angelic choruses, he'll get Four Times That!"

"Well, then you'd better get busy summoning," Harmony ordered, posing cutely, before spotting something they'd missed earlier in the shop.

Xander charged the card, blinding everyone with green light, and one short copy session later he was animating all of the trees on that section of road. Concrete split as they grew taller and wider, trunks thickening and branches filling out over a much wider section. Faces also appeared on their trunks, and the trees reported to Xander as loyal soldiers.

The boy himself had grown healthier, injuries and bruises vanishing until he looked better than before he'd cast fastbond. In fact, he'd never felt this good. Ever. Not even half. It was as if all of the 'Feel Good' in the universe had been dumped upon him. The man was quite literally glowing with health and vitality in ways that makers of soap commercials would weep in shame and envy over.

"All of a sudden jocks don't look so good anymore," Harmony confirmed to herself, eying him over the tops of her new set of enchanted reading glasses she'd found lying around, already halfway through a For Dummies book on English she'd copied, having been idly reading through it while waiting for the others to get to some good stuff.

She'd been finding that book surprisingly interesting.

"What's next? Willow asked, glad to see her Xander well again and eager to see about him being protected.

"Probably one of the walls, so he has defenders," Amy replied.

Xander pointed himself at some chain link fences put up to divert people around one of the buildings damaged in the chaos of last night. Charging up one card with blinding white light, he again handed it over to Harmony for duplicating, and soon thereafter those fences vanished, morphing into insubstantial walls of light that, while nearly invisible in the daylight, were incredibly hard to look at directly and gave formidable protection.

"What card was that?" Willow bit her lower lip, considering this new phenomena.

"Wall of Glare, it can block any number of attackers," Xander answered with a smile.

"Nice." She returned his smile with an equally bright one of her own. "Also explains why it looks so... like it's barely there. Only magic could make a practical defense out of something well, like glare," she continued in practical tones.

Amy also contributed in her own practical tones. "Ok, experiments one and two a success. It looks like you can choose the things to empower, so long as they bear a resemblance to what the final product should be. So, dolls ought to do fine as proxies. There were plenty back in the shop."

"Actually," Willow interrupted. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd much rather be a sorceress than a knight. Bashing things with a sword is very not-Willow. Spells are much better."

A bunch of looks got exchanged all around.

"Sure, if that's what you want," Amy agreed.

They all adjourned back inside, carefully arranged a set of mannequins that had been dressed up as Raggedy Ann and Andy, along with a detective. Willow stood next to them, and Xander raised up the card.

Only for nothing to happen.

"What's wrong?" Harmony peeked from around her copier when the expected glare of light did not appear. She'd been transferring reams of paper from the huckster's coat in exchange for bills she'd already printed.

"I don't know!" Xander protested, still frozen in position, card held high. "It's like I charged it, but didn't. There's no turning over of the starter motor!"

Amy went up to see what was wrong, then palmed her face. "I can't believe we didn't think of that."

"What?" chorused all the other females.

"Prodigal Sorcerer is a blue card, which needs blue mana to cast," Amy explained. "You need islands for that. But Xander never had any islands in play. We've been using mox diamonds, which can produce mana of any color, to substitute. But we ran out of the last one of those casting ancestral recall. Now Xander is holding a half-charged card. It has all of the colorless mana it needs already spent, but we haven't got any blue to..."

She broke off explaining when Harmony emerged from the back room carrying one of the magic paint cans they'd discovered earlier and shaking it in her hand.

"So, the card has mana in it, the problem is it's colorless, right?" the cheerleader bubbled.

All of a sudden the room was awash in blue light as she'd sprayed paint on the card. After a brief, "fully charged?" directed at Xander, to which he returned a stunned nod, she took it from his hands to run through her copier, and returned with four of it shortly.

"Alright, go ahead."

Another stunned nod from the Xand-man, although you had to be squinting pretty hard to see it through all of that brilliant blue light. Deciding to start with Willow, he directed the first card toward her, then...

STOP!

Xander found his hand full of charged summon cards shoved into a backpack, which then got zipped up to limit the glow, so it was only moderately bright in the room as Amy rushed over from where she performed her emergency brightness limitation and went to attend to his redhaired friend, who was clearly in distress.

The problem was, well, Willow obviously wasn't doing all right. In fact, it was as though there was a clear plastic sack full of Willow parts and two of her all divided up in pieces kept struggling to get out, one in white armor, the other wearing blue robes.

Xander, looking in concern for his friend, found to his surprise that he could see a list of stats she had as a creature sort of superimposed over her, and they were shifting constantly. He barely had time to recognize the horror of the situation before Amy had raised her Halloween wand and pointed, "Two Become One!"

Everything stopped, and as they stared at her in that moment of silence. Amy, blushing, declared, "What? You try thinking of poetry in a time like this."

In the very next moment, before there was time for word or thought to answer her back again, everything Willow seemed to drag itself back into place and assemble itself in its proper order.

Laying there upon the floor was one Willow, but garbed both in her original suit of skimpy white armor, over a new outfit of blue robes cut to be equally revealing in their own way. She sat up, apparently none the worse for wear, and blinking at all of them as if to wonder what all the fuss was about. "Did I miss something?"

The redhaired lass was quickly brought up to speed on recent events concerning her, and as they did so her companions couldn't help but note how effortlessly she teleported a pen and notebook to herself from her home to record events as they'd transpired.

It was when she floated up, quite without thinking, to a more comfortable seat in the air and set her notebook before her upon nothing (to have a more firm surface on which to write than her lap had been), and it stayed there as though supported on a stone slab despite there being nothing between it and the floor but air, that they began to realize the scope of her changes.

"And then what?" Willow asked, coming to the end of their rendition of what transpired.

All they could do in response was point to where she was floating in mid-air. "And then you started doing that."

"Ouch!"

Harmony forced out a giggle. "What?" she demanded, when their gazes turned toward her. "There she was, floating about like nobody's business, and the moment she realized she's doing it, it surprised her so much that she stopped and fell on her butt? I think that's funny. More to the point, that's exactly what I came here for this morning. Since blowing up nasty critters all last night, I've wanted nothing more than for magic to be that easy again. Do me next!" and with that Harmony stood before Xander and posed as though to take something without flinching.

His eyes went to Amy.

She clutched her wand, a trifle nervously. "I'm pretty sure I can fix it if things go a little wonky at first, like with Willow," she half-apologized, then couldn't resist asking, "What are her stats like? Are they as a wizard, or the knight?"

Glancing once again toward Willow to be sure, Xander read off what he saw that, compared that to the others, then told everyone, "I'm pretty sure they are both. Willow has the two-two, first strike, and protection from black of a white knight, instead of being the one-one and neither of those abilities of a prodigal sorcerer. But she has the sorcerer's special ability too: tap to do one damage to any target."

Amy shook her head in amazement. "Wow! Sounds like she got the best of both. That is way better than I imagined!"

Thus reassured, the young lad played the next prodigal sorcerer card upon Harmony, who morphed for a bit, but then was quickly put to rights by Amy. On recovery, the newly empowered Harmony announced, "It doesn't even really feel like anything. One moment you are disoriented, like just waking up, and then you're fine!"

As if to prove her statement, she immediately leaped into the air - and stayed there, turning a few twists and flips like a swimmer in the middle of a pool rather than a young lady who had just learned how to defy gravity. "This is neat! SOO worth it!"

Amy suffered a flicker of jealousy before she impulsively pressed her wand upon Willow and presented herself before Xander, saying sheepishly, "Well? I told you when I came here all I wanted was to get my broom back to working so I could go flying. There's no broom repair kit here, but this looks even better. C'mon, quick, before I change my mind!"

Looking to Willow, who shrugged, Xander once again applied the card in his hand. Willow proved every bit as adept at fixing the transition problem as Amy, and in seconds three flying, telekinetic ladies were zooming about the shop, gleeful in their discovery that they also had other common wizard tricks, like transforming minor objects and shooting bolts of fire and lightning.

"Oh why not?" Xander asked the Heavens above, before saying, "There's no way I am going to miss out on that," and zapping himself with the last prodigal sorcerer card.

Moments later, as he recovered and sparks danced across his fingers while he floated upside down in mid air, he had to agree, "Totally worth it!"

A quick aerial game of chase resulted, which ended almost as soon as the fun had begun as their reserves of magic quickly got exhausted.

"Whew!" Amy came to a rest on the shop counter, panting and fanning herself. "Now I know why this wasn't listed as a flying card! You can do it, but it takes so much energy there is no way you'd be able to keep it up, and you'd never be able to fight or defend yourself at the same time, to say nothing of shooting off blasts, blowing apart targets past the horizon."

"What?" she met disbelieving stares. "That's what this card is famous for! Prodigal Sorcerer is the original 'point and die' creature. He doesn't do that much damage, only one point, but if a creature exists anywhere, he can hit it automatically, without any danger to himself. And though a point doesn't sound like much that is enough to blast whole regiments of infantry to dust from halfway across the globe! Killing things in combat is messy and uncertain, and there is an excellent chance you'll die yourself, especially if you are only a one-one creature. But he skipped past that by never having to attack at all, just 'boom! you're dead'! He was so effective they had to come out with whole new defenses in later editions to prevent him from dominating the game. Despite that, he's still useful, and get two or three together acting in concert and they can take down even reasonably tough monsters like minor demons and young dragons. The prodigal sorcerer is even the first card with a nickname. There's a movie where this wizard spends a good couple of minutes pointing at stuff and blowing it up, so people began to call the card after the name of the wizard in that movie - Tim."

"Tim?" got asked in unbelief.

Amy shrugged. "It was a comedy flick. One of the jokes was this great, dramatic moment where this walking artillery piece of a mage gets asked his name, and tells them in stuffy and pompous tones, 'There are some who call me - Tim'. It was hilarious."

"Well," Willow smiled, "with a name like 'prodigal sorcerer' I'm not surprised it came with a host of comparatively minor magical abilities that don't figure on the scale of 'blast whole regiments of infantry to dust from halfway across the globe'."

Discovering they had nothing more to say on that subject, they set up another dummy so that Xander would have a full set of human-like targets to practice his next summoning on.

"Serra Angel!" he called out, raising the card on high, charging it with the most brilliant white light yet, so that Harmony had to protect herself with her elbow covering both eyes while taking it over to copy. Then Xander tried to bring it down, only to be unable.

"Dummies not doing it for ya, huh?" Harmony asked after a moment where he just stood there.

"They're the closest proxies we've got," Amy apologized.

"Not quite," the cheerleader smirked, walking to stand before Xander and bracing herself. "Come on, do me! I wouldn't mind being able to fly for real, rather than short trips. Besides, how cool would it be to be an angel? Don't worry, I'll be fine."

Not having any other options presented in the next couple of seconds, Xander complied.

It took Amy a solid minute to put her to rights this time. "That was worse than before," the blonde witch admitted, panting with the effort. "I know I could never do that again, if you ever decide to take it up to four. Combining three is obviously my limit."

"Thank you," Harmony told her in the kindest, gentlest possible way, sitting up to gently kiss the other girl on the cheek in thanks.

Amy nodded, awestruck.

Harmony floated up off the floor and twirled in place once, giving herself a once over. Not only had her looks taken a significant step up, proportions all just right in the right places, her robes had now taken on a more elegant cast, no longer slutty but still infinitely alluring, and with significantly less blue and more white than before.

Her hair was perfect, her lips and face were perfect, her skin was perfect, and when she called forth a pair of white feathered wings from out of her back, those were perfect too.

Willow Eeeped, then blushed in envy, only to be startled when Amy shoved her wand into the redhead's hands right before presenting herself before Xander.

"Me too?"

Xander sighed, took his hand from out of the bag where it had been stuck to spare everybody's vision, then raised the card.

Moments later Angel Amy was twirling in space too.

Xander could no longer be surprised when Willow speechlessly tugged on the hem on his shirt longingly.

She got the treatment too, then the young man followed suit with himself.

When he came to everything seemed clear, made sense and was rational. He had been given these powers to serve a higher purpose, to bring about the triumph of Good over the world, to save mankind from enemies that would otherwise surely destroy it.

Harmony and Amy were already using magic spray paint to convert the blue parts of their garments over to white. "There is no inherent advantage to being two-color creatures," she explained. "Most of the time it only makes you more vulnerable. Anything that has protection from either color stops you, anything that can destroy either color gets you."

Nothing more needed to be said. Paint cans got passed around, and shortly thereafter everybody was pure white in their attire, magically altering their nature to eliminate the blue.

"What are our stats now?" Willow inquired, positively radiating serenity.

"Serra Angel is a four-four, and combining with Harmony bumped her up to that level. The same is true of us. We also got the angel's special abilities of flying, and not tapping to attack." Xander calmly explained.

"We are now, all of us, better vampire slayers than Buffy could ever be," Amy declared without preamble. "We are four-four creatures with a very gratifying list of special powers. Since most vampires have power and toughness in the three or four range or lower, our first strike ability alone enables us to destroy them before they could ever endanger us. But more importantly, we also have Protection From Black, and all vampires are black creatures, so there is not any vampire in existence that could hurt us, no matter how they tried. We can destroy them effortlessly, and none of them could ever destroy us in turn."

The others accepted this as only right and proper.

"Add to that, we have considerable magic. Parlor tricks aside, it's enough to destroy army units from continents away. But we are still not without danger. Other threats than vampires exist. We must prepare for them."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I have been asked about Willow's costume and Buffy's stay in the hospital, and since I really don't see me covering that in the story, here it is.

Simply, Xander found a cheap 4 sticker, like on the outfits of the Fantastic Four, and saw his perfect costume. With a long sleeve blue T-shirt, the right pants, some white tape and that sticker, he could be one of the Fantastic Four! He chose Johnny Storm over Reed Richards as the realm of science geek was always Willow's department.

Night of, Johnny comes to surrounded by violence, goes 'Flame On!' and flies off almost immediately to deal with the bounteous problems, long before he could be found by the ghost of Willow. He spends a little over three hours or so killing, on average, a vampire every second (often doing large groups with a single fireball, as well as setting off carefully measured explosions into the methane gas that fills most sewers to fry the vamps hiding within), depopulating most of the California undead population and racking up a kill total that is going to be infamous among demons until the end of time.

Left to herself, Willow's ghost finds Buffy, but there is no way the Lady Elizabeth is going to do anything this ghost of a street harlot tells her. Result is, no seeking safety at home, no soldier guardian, no understanding of even basic machines, and predictably getting into LOTS more trouble as the beasts of the night prey upon her, finding her some of the most entertaining and amusing prey out there.

Angel never shows his face to rescue her, as vampires are dying like flies out there. So he keeps his head down lest he be among those burned to cinders, either via Johnny "Death From Above" Storm on one of his frequent passes, or from Naga The White Serpent in her killing spree on the ground.

Yes, Harmony had dressed as Naga, from Slayers. That is my own private joke in the title.

So Buffster spent one miserable night starring as a helpless victim in a monster mash, on occasion being rescued by Naga, who actually has no interest in another snotty aristocrat, just killing the monsters, so Lady Elizabeth invariably gets into more trouble again. Willow's ghost takes much longer seeking out Giles, as there was no 'safety' to leave Buffy in, and despite the fact the noblewoman would not listen to her, could not bear to leave her alone.

Anyway, ends with Larry the Pirate and the almost-rape, but the whole experience was bad enough even Slayer healing is going to take some time to put Buffy back together.

And, anyone who wants to use the above outline to create a story, they are welcome to.


	3. Chapter 3

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Three

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

"But we are still not without danger. Other threats than vampires exist. We must prepare for them."

No discussion followed. None was needed. A great deal of spellcasting occurred, however. Walls of Vapor got summoned, whose special ability was to reduce all damage they took in combat to zero. Drawing on their own experience, these got combined with the walls of glare, which could block whole armies. The combination of these two made for walls who could block armies and take no damage doing so.

Asceticism, a green enchantment that prevented creatures Xander controlled from being the target of opponents' spells or special abilities, and that allowed him to regenerate them if they should somehow be killed, got deployed.

They put an Artifact Ward over themselves, so they could not be targeted or damaged by machines, of which their world had plenty. Then they followed up by putting four each of Fortified Area, Ivory Tower and Urza's Armor into play.

Until only one thing remained.

One more angel type to summon, which was the problem. Who to transform?

"Xander," Amy told him seriously. "You need this. Most of your power comes from artifacts, and you have some very impressive, rare and wonderful ones, but artifacts are stupidly easy to destroy in this game. The only thing that could save them for your future use is something like this effect, and you are insanely lucky to have a creature that offers it."

"But who are we going to change?" Willow clearly felt distressed over the moral dilemma. "None of us are available. We can't do combos of four. It's not possible!"

Harmony simply opened her cell phone and hit speed dial one. "Cordy? Hi. No, today I'm skipping, and when you hear my news you will too." A pause. "Because I'm standing next to a guy who just dispensed four necklaces whose jewels are worth more than your parent's house, and if you want one for yourself, you will bring your and the other three Cordettes' fannies here in a rush before he decides to use someone else. Oh, and you owe me a big favor that I even let you in on this opportunity."

Harmony rattled off an address, then closed the phone, grinning like a cat. "Heh, I knew that would get her. She says she's claiming family emergency to walk out of class right now. I hope you don't mind, she probably expects sex will be required of her."

"No, I don't mind!" Xander quickly protested.

"No Breaking Commandments!" Willow insisted. "We don't need anyone to become a fallen angel."

"No, that wouldn't do anyone any good," Amy admitted. "For one thing, you'd lose flying."

"I'll be good!" Xander promised, a genuine halo forming above his head.

Relaxing now that danger was passed, Willow moved on to her next concern, "Now where are we going to get another diamond this big for her? To say nothing about four of them."

"If she's anything like your stereotypical teenage girl, I'm pretty sure she'd do it for the beauty alone," the cat offered his opinion. "To say nothing of the flying or other gifts."

"That's the deal, we're angels now." Amy told her cat. "Keeping promises is kind of in the job description, I'm pretty sure. And while we didn't quite promise, we did heavily imply jewelry on arrival."

"I'd be willing to offer my own," Harmony surprised them all by declaring.

"Are you sure?" Willow now felt concerned for her friend and fellow angel, who she knew liked those jewels so much. "Have you tried the copy machine? Maybe it can duplicate one of the diamonds."

"I've tried it on my diamond, the gold ring, and pearl necklace," Harmony confessed. "I even tried it on a couple of pens, a comb, and my cell phone. Nothing. I think it only works on paper."

"Why don't you use that street vendor's jacket?" the cat suggested.

Amy quickly stalked over there, wand in hand, took hold of the lapel, told it "Diamonds," and flipped it open. After a moment's consideration, she said, "Well, we've got enough here I could use magic to combine them into the right size stones. They won't be magic, but that was never part of our offer. The only trouble will be coming up with enough cash."

"Here," Harmony handed over four stacks of bills. "I've been printing hundreds ever since Xander displaced that first twenty to print cards. Each stack is a hundred bills, so at ten thousand per, forty grand. If that's not enough, I've printed more."

Nodding a little dubiously, Amy put those bills in the overcoat's pocket and pulled out enough of the dangling diamonds to do her job, plus some. The pieces of jewelry were, as Harmony had observed earlier, offered at a substantial discount.

A few short waves of her wand and there were four copies of their mox diamond necklaces, each slightly different, and lacking the substantial magic, but real gems whose appearance was nearly the same, so they could have been offered as parts of the same set.

Then she set about turning the leftover gold into nonmagical copies of their sol rings, just to have something to improve their bargaining position, should that become necessary. But she didn't think so. Her cat was right. Just about any girl would do this for the beauty alone.

In a couple of short trips they had transferred everything of value from Ethan's shop to the closest library of Alexandria out across the back way, which was the place Harmony had set up to meet the raw material for Xander's next summon spell.

So strong had they become that even the heavy stuff, photocopier and porcelain throne included, were easily handled just between two of them.

On the plus side, they'd discovered one of the powers of their copy machine - it no longer required electricity, just paper. So they could stand it anywhere, even in a building a few millennia old, and it'd be just fine.

On the plus, plus side, the ancient empire of Constantinople had flush toilets, so apparently major civic buildings like their libraries did too. Convenient, that, as the throne they'd taken out of Ethan's shop clearly wasn't suited to do that work anymore. In fact, if they didn't know it had once been a toilet, they would've thought it ought to have been locked up in museum as a national art treasure on the level of a Faberge egg, because it was all over gold and jewels and stuff until it really looked on that level of pretty.

Xander was lounging on it when Cordelia and the rest of her Cordettes arrived. Willow and the other girls had taken time to pop the Mr Clean bottle so the old place wasn't so musty (it went from dusty to sparkly just like that) and switch into nonmagical harem-girl outfits they'd found in the shop, that not only set the tone, but displayed their gorgeous jewelry properly.

"Ok, let's cut right to the Chase," Xander announced, grinning at his intentional pun. He waved grandly in the direction of these new arrivals, "You four are here in hopes of some really expensive jewels, and I want you for my personal use. Any questions so far?"

Two of the Cordettes blushed, edging in a little further behind Cordelia, who looked borderline furious at learning who the sugar daddy was. But she held her temper long enough to hiss through gritted teeth, "Let's see these supposed jewels first."

A nod toward Amy and she came forward bearing a tray before her, on which were laid out the four new necklaces. Cordelia gave her, the pink harem outfit she was wearing and the large jewels around her throat an indecipherable glance before commanding the Cordette who'd been standing by her right hand, "Sophie."

The brunette so named stood forward and slipped on a jeweler's eyepiece, bending to examine the proffered diamonds.

"They're real," came Sophie's instant pronouncement. "High quality, too. I don't have the experience to judge stones this size, my dad never deals in anything larger than a single carat, only a handful of houses do, but my guess is up in the millions."

At this Cordelia and her entourage were shocked back on their heels for a moment, having been expecting a bad joke or prank from the instant they saw Xander. A quick huddle resulted, where Sophie actually had to be pried away from her ongoing examination of the merchandise to participate, and put down the last stone she'd been verifying with a touch of real regret.

Her voice came through powerfully as Sophie repeated with some urgency, "I'm telling you I don't have an exact dollar amount! Most pieces I can appraise just fine, but most people don't wear anything like this! Nobody does! I mean, we're talking stuff only Rockafellers, royal families, or the pope might wear! Jewels this big are on a whole different level! There are probably only a dozen people in the world who are qualified to set a price on them! And even then it could fluctuate wildly at auction! It's all really up to what the buyers feel like paying that day!"

The huddle broke only moments later, with Cordy in front as acting spokeswoman. "And what, exactly, are you expecting in return?"

"What do you think?" Xander returned with a leer.

Willow rolled her eyes and huffed, butting in to offer her own suggestion, "I still don't think she's qualified. We'd be better off with someone else." She directed a glare to the startled cluster of cheerleaders. "Someone we don't have years of animosity with to overcome."

"Agreed," Amy popped in her opinion, smirking at the Cordettes over her tray.

Xander threw his leg over one arm of his throne and rubbed his chin, appearing thoughtful. "Well, I would hate to have friction in a harem. Other than the obvious, of course."

Willow pulled on his sleeve, pleading, "Xander, you ought to know these things always go better when the girls involved get along, and Cordelia hates everyone here!"

"Hey!"

"Well, everyone except Harmony," Willow amended.

Harmony sat up from where she'd been lounging with a book and directed a glare to those aforementioned cheerleaders. "You don't say anything? Hey, Cord, I stuck my neck out for you, making the recommendation that got you here. And you won't even say a peep to make it work?"

"No! No, I'll take it!" Cordelia squeaked, seeing her opportunity for awesome jewelry about to vanish away from before her.

"What do you mean 'you'll take it'? It hasn't even been offered to you," Xander smirked at the looks on their faces, kicking back to lounge on his well-padded throne. "These aren't door prizes, to be handed out to anyone who walks in here. They are perks that come with a position for which you have yet to even apply."

Oh, the mortification on those cheerleaders faces was priceless!

"Alright, here's the deal," Xander threw off lounging and sat up straight and tall, "What this job is about is niceness, specifically niceness to me, but that includes anyone else I've got in this handy arrangement with me. Can you do it?" he asked their guests directly.

Cordelia was rocked back on her heels. Nothing about this had gone like she'd imagined since Harmony's call had first come. Not the weirdo building from out of nowhere, nor the jeweled throne, or the mousy Willow and Amy dressed up as eye candy, and especially not Xander being the man handing out priceless necklaces.

Nothing was normal, and it was all catching her a little out of her comfort zone. Worse, when she was uncomfortable she got catty, and that wasn't helping her any.

Several of her Cordettes had been eying Xander, though, and as the shock they'd felt on arrival wore off, his new handsome face and physique became more apparent. On seeing how drool-worthy he'd become, one of them called out, "Oh, hell yeah!"

"That's a word you won't be using much of if you take this position," Willow giggled at her own secret joke. Angels did not use profanity, she felt certain. And swearing by the name of Hell was right out!

"Well, if you feel you can handle it, here's the sign up sheet," Amy popped the pad of receipts onto the tray she was using to carry the jewelry. "If they have your permission, that is?" she directed that question towards Xander.

He gave a slight nod. "I am actually firmly convinced of Cordelia's ability to stick by anything she resolves to do, whether good or bad. Most of our lives her resolve has been to treat us badly, but if she agrees to change that, I can see her sticking by that, too."

Listening to her friends giggle behind her served quite well to point out to Cordy how well Xander had cleaned up lately. Yes, he was handsome, quite amazingly so. Guy had had quite a makeover recently, and frankly outshone any of the jocks at school.

Not being hard on the eyes was good. Indications he was now filthy rich were better (richer than her parents, if she was reading the indications right). That he was willing to let bygones be bygones was the real clincher, however.

She grabbed the pad and signed her name. "Alright, let's do this."

"Good." Xander hopped down from off his throne and strode towards them, plucking up the first of many necklaces to attach it around Cordelia's throat as she was first to sign.

"How long are we committing for?" Sophie asked as she signed her own name, causing Cordelia to wish she'd asked that question herself.

"There is no set end date," Xander replied with a smile.

"Harems are a lifetime commitment," Willow affirmed.

As the last of the Cordettes signed, Amy snickered at what she read on it, made a notation of her own that this was in exchange for four diamond necklaces, tore off that receipt and handed it to the nearest of them, who absently tucked it inside her purse.

Xander at that moment took out a card. "What happens now is probably best described as a magic makeover. You'll note we're all prettier than we used to be when you saw us last, that's largely due to a magic spell much like this. Our changes were a little more extensive than you'll be getting, but basically what will happen is that I'll charge this card with power, it will glow bright white, I'll then hand it over to Harmony to copy it, then I'll cast it on each of the four of you."

He smirked. "On the plus side, in addition to being more beautiful than you already are, this will enhance your muscles so that if you ever run into any vampires, beating up anything short of the real top masters won't be very hard."

"Vampires?" None of the Cordettes had any good response to that.

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "It's what the cops have been calling all those wild animal attacks, 'gangs on PCP', and barbecue fork stabbings." She snorted in disdain. "You didn't really think that hundreds of people just happened to stab themselves in the neck, did you? That would be stupid. How many people do you even know who do any barbecuing, anyway? Nobody, that's who. Not around here. But even if it was everybody that wouldn't make it our leading cause of death in town - as it it. So... Hey! Watch it with that thing!"

Cordelia threw up her arms to protect her eyesight as Xander, just as her Cordettes had been about to reassure her they were not stupid, had instead charged up his card.

"Oh, it gets worse," Harmony reassured them cheerfully as she plucked that final card out of Xander's fingers and went and did her duplicating.

"Indomitable Archangel," Amy explained, when Xander got his newly copied cards back and began transforming cheerleaders. "As strong as Serra, flies just like Serra, but instead of not tapping to attack has a special power that while he controls you, none of his artifacts can be targets of spells or effects. So destroying them becomes a *lot* harder."

Cordelia was even then completing her floating spin of self-examination. When she landed, she approached Xander kindly and tenderly, and with tears of sorrow and remorse in her eyes cradled his face between her hands and explained, "I just want you to know, Xander, how really *very* sorry I am about all of those cruel things I did to you."

"I know," he told her in equal sincerity. "For my part, I'm sorry for teasing you."

She wrapped him in a hug of gratitude and mutual forgiveness, before releasing him to go off and do the same apologizing deal to Willow. As she left, though, one of her Cordettes moved up right behind her to make her own apologies, with another behind her.

Harmony slapped her English For Dummies book closed before they were done with all of the tearful forgiveness, and tore her enchanted reading glasses off. "Wow! That was good stuff! I never thought that subject could be so interesting."

She watched as the magical For Dummies book turned to dust in her hand and blew away, disappearing into a nonexistent wind as the magic instructional tool completed the end it had been designed for.

Lucky that was only a copy she'd made of the original.

Amy chose that moment to slip her a quick peek at the store copy of the receipt Cordy had signed, and Harmony bust a gut, rolling around on the very clean floor laughing. Curious at this reaction, Willow came over for a look, and appeared mortified, blushing furiously.

Amy then waltzed over to Xander, slapping the receipt into his hand. "There you go, one receipt for the harem members you just purchased."

Xander stared down at the slip of paper, and Cordy had indeed been misled enough by their little game to sign "Harem member" beside her name, and the rest of her Cordettes had followed suit.

"Uh, you know that was a joke, right?"

"Was," Harmony emphasized, before busting out again in laughter.

"Anyway," Amy sighed. "That's the end of turn one for Xander, unless you'd like to attack something?"

The young man shook his head. "Love to, but I don't know where any of my enemies are, much less how to attack them."

"So, we'll just go with hoping they don't know you're here yet, either," Amy shrugged.

"Hey!" Willow cheered, "We should go tell Giles about Xander's awesome new magic powers!"

OoOoO

Having already checked themselves out of school for the day, none of Cordelia's group felt much like returning. So Harmony agreed to show them around, introduce the new magic stuff and explain what had been going on all morning with the summons and stuff.

A shopping trip after they'd been brought up to speed was strongly implied.

So Xander, Amy and Willow pulled up, late but nonetheless present, in a brand new convertible they'd paid cash for that morning, hopped out of the car, and were swinging their bags jauntily on their way to the doors when Xander suddenly stiffened.

"Harris!" a familiar voice shouted.

The boy's sword lashed out without even thinking of it, lodging five inches deep into the concrete post that served as doorjamb, after having cut off the person's head.

Xander carefully wet his lips and recited what he was seeing, looking down upon the man's headless corpse. "Principal Snyder, a zero-one black troll, with the special abilities of tap Snyder to tap target creature, and when used to block a creature of type 'student' neither opponent deals damage in combat."

"What's an enemy creature doing running our school?" Amy asked in distress.

Willow was on the verge of gibbering over seeing the headless form of their school principal lying on the ground next to his very recently removed head.

Xander sighed and released his sword from the concrete it was stuck in with a light tug. "Well, we always knew he wasn't friendly." He stared at his own sword, contemplating it for a moment. "We also know that our first strike ability works just fine. He came to attack, and I got to him first with enough damage he never even got to try to hurt me. It was reflexive, like sneezing. I felt his his intent to attempt to harm us, and the response was automatic."

Willow's eyes went very wide, and she stopped stuttering.

They moved on very quickly, being careful to avoid the spreading pool of blood. When they got to the Sunnydale High library all three teens were willing to instantly blurt out everything, only Giles was on the phone and waved them off, signaling it was important - And Xander wasn't the only one to stiffen at the sight of the Englishman.

"Do you see..?" Willow whispered in sudden dread.

"Rupert Giles, aka Ripper," Xander read out of the card stats he was effectively seeing superimposed over the man's image. "A one-one blue-black creature, with three special abilities: One, when Watcher is in play reduce damage taken by Slayer by one. Two, tap Watcher to give Slayer first strike until end of turn, or Three, sacrifice Watcher to give Slayer plus two to both power and toughness until end of turn."

Willow shivered in sudden dread. The image of Giles as a black creature, even only a partly black one, shattered so many illusions!

That was the moment when Giles hung up the phone. Coming out of the back room, he told them with a sigh, "That was England, my superiors in the Watcher organization, actually. They have learned of some new mage whose presence is affecting the ether, and want us to keep an eye out, as he may be in our area. They ask that we find him quickly, so he can be terminated with extreme prejudice. Apparently, this is quite a dangerous fellow, so they are even lifting, temporarily, the restriction on Slayers from taking human life. Oh, what a day for Buffy to be in the hospital." The Englishman rubbed his face.

"Couldn't you, you know? Talk to him?" Amy's eyes were bulging.

"At the levels of power they described, I couldn't trust that mage, even if I were he. No, the temptations at that level are too great. Some things are not meant to be tampered with by mortals, and most men who discover enough power to conquer the world do unspeakably horrid things, so are not to be trusted in any guise. Virtually all of them end up ascending as demon lords, so protocols have been in place since the middle ages to terminate sorcerers who accumulate even one percent of the power they report this mage as already having used only just today," Giles answered seriously. Then he brightened. "Never mind. What can I do for you three this morning?"

"Nothing, G-man," Xander temporized, fighting a sudden urge to raise his fists and say 'put 'em up'.

"Yeah. We're just here for some translation books," Amy butted in.

"It does indeed sound like time to start searching among prophecies, does it not? Well, you know where they are." The watcher waved towards the stacks, turning about to head back into his office. "I've got some calls to make to help coordinate the search."

They grabbed several books each, then rushed out of the library almost at a run. Since the warning bell for class had just rung, this did not even appear at all suspicious. So in that they got lucky.

Willow was white with shock even as they were leaving that former sanctuary to mingle among the students rushing about to classes.

Xander was marveling, most everyone he could see registering to his strange, new sight as 'zero-zero nonentities', completely irrelevant on the scale the game was played, not even a color allegiance to identify them. Although he did get quite a shock at those one or two who were different. For instance, at computer class he jumped as though pinched to see his teacher come across as 'Janna Kalderash, aka Jenny Calendar, a zero-one red gypsy'.

The rest of that school day was sort of lost in a shocked daze.

He was wandering out of school at the end of final period when Amy and Willow met up with him at their new car. Willow was in as bad a state as he, but Amy grabbed both of their shoulders and guided them into the car with some urgency. "Come on!"

"What?" the disturbed young man demanded. Wasn't it enough that his whole view of the world had been inverted? He'd been stuck all day on Giles wanting him dead. Wasn't he supposed to be one of the good guys?

But, then... where did that black moniker come from?

Amy sat him down into the passenger seat hard, filing Willow into the back, before she took hold of the keys and took her place as driver. "The game's not over yet, Xander. You're still alive, so we keep fighting. That's all there is to it. And when we loaded up on translation books, I grabbed a couple each on troll and thieves' cant. Harmony called earlier. With those reading glasses she found, she can cover about thirty pages a minute. She's already been through all of her school subjects. Cordelia and the other Cordettes, too. They say it works like a charm, like loading a program into a computer, suddenly you just know about a subject. Now we're going to go meet up with them. They're bringing that Book of Exalted Deeds and Libram of Silver Magic that level up clerics and wizards, and we've got the books that can translate them into something that we can read. So we are about to discover what magic level up books can do for us."

She put the car into gear and drove off in a rush, dodging traffic as she did so.

OoOoO

Harmony had already altered the title page of the Book of Exalted Deeds, using the magic label maker they'd found in the shop she'd printed a "for angels" to superimpose over the "for clerics" part in the subtitle of "A guide to leveling up for clerics."

The weird part was, her little alteration had sunk into the page and now looked original - A fact that made them afraid to do excessive alterations to these priceless texts, as there were quite a few of these sorts of magic books and manuals that hurt a reader who didn't meet strict requirements - Requirements that probably didn't get altered by a strip of tape.

"It looks like the one in troll is easier to translate," Cordy declared, after having glanced over the books, showing only minor distaste at that information. "That means more work for those of us who aren't wizards than if the reverse had been the case."

Harmony nodded. As all eight of them were angels, but only four were wizards, the work load got a little harder than it would be if the book for wizards was easier to read. Still, that was not entirely unexpected.

Troll was a simple language, suited to the none-too-bright trolls. Thieves' Cant, on the other hand, was a code meant to obscure meaning from any non-thieves. Since the authorities could afford to hire some pretty clever codebreakers and linguists, that meant more work to translate it, even with a guide handy.

She snorted good-naturedly, reaching for the guide on thieves' cant. "We're lucky use of this code this died out in the middle ages. If it were a current tongue, those who speak it would have made sure there weren't any easy ways to translate it."

"True," Cordelia allowed.

The way it worked out, normal reading of a Book of Exalted Deeds or similar took about a week of constant effort without significant interruption. With the reading glasses Harmony had discovered in that shop, they could do it in ten minutes, and that was even with all of the extra work of translating.

So, all told, they spent two hours that afternoon just reading those two books. Eighty minutes as all eight read the one, then forty more as four read another. And the results were fantastic, well worth the effort.

Every angel who read copies printed of that Book of Exalted Deeds improved from four-four to five-five creatures, as powerful and tough as adult dragons. That alone would have been well worth it. However, Cordelia and her three Cordettes, who'd become angel types who did not have the special ability that allowed them to attack without tapping, now could, study of the book having granted them that ability.

Xander and his three girls, who already had the ability to attack without tapping, got what they considered an even better ability, in that they could now do the Prodigal Sorcerer thing without tapping. Although they were limited in that they could only do it for free once a turn.

The Libram of Silver Magic had its own benefit in that those who read it got significantly better at wielding magic. Their powers of blowing up creatures from across the horizon now did twice as much damage, with a commensurate increase in their 'parlor trick' magic abilities.

"So what should we hit?" Harmony eagerly asked.

"No idea," Xander confessed. "I don't even know who my enemies are."

"That does kind of put a limit on blowing them up from continents away," she scolded.

"It's not like it's his fault," Amy interrupted. "The game he draws his powers from has no provision for getting information, because everything is supposed to be known at all times. He is, in that sense, very much a fish out of water. He comes from an environment where water is supposed to be everywhere all of the time. Now he is in a place without, and you are going to scold him for not having some way to summon more?"

"I didn't mean that," Harmony confessed, flouncing her shoulders. "It's just, now that I have these powers I want to use them to blow up something evil!"

Amy smiled. "Well, I can understand that. I do too."

OoOoO

In her bedroom late that night, Willow's eyes snapped open, instantly waking her from a sound sleep. Rising in her nightgown, her eyes sought out her alarm clock, finding it to be just after midnight.

Swiftly rising, she began to dress. Xander needed her!

In another part of town at the same time, yet in a much nicer bedroom, Harmony's eyes snapped open as well, filled with the same urgency. The thing that was different there was the first thing she reached for was her cell phone, and hit speed dial one.

As the clock ticked over to 12:05, seven girls arose from their sleep and began to dress, some stirred by an innate sixth sense, others by phone calls, but all for exactly the same reason.

OoOoO

Xander's eyes flew open at exactly 12:05, his body filled with energy, and he knew exactly for what purpose.

Combat was coming to his door.

He dressed in a hurry. Armor on, artifacts in place, he left nothing valuable behind, then sped off into the darkened night.

OoOoO

There were thirty of them, vampires all, soldiers from various wars. Such was the dangers of their profession that few of them were very old, by vampire standards. They still dressed in uniforms, though it was an eclectic collection, not tied to any period or locale. Mostly, they just stuck to camouflage these days.

The weapons they carried were equally varied, from top of the line, current day arms, all of the way back to sabers and one World War Two flamethrower. One might almost expect muskets, as many of these men had originally trained on them, but they were mercenaries, and mercs lived or died by their equipment and training, and nothing but the best would do.

The flamethrower, while dangerous, was especially useful as one of their two door-knocker devices. Just because vampires couldn't enter a house without an invitation didn't mean they couldn't burn it down, after all. They didn't need to enter - you'll want to come out of the burning house. And neither garlic nor holy water dealt all that well with an infusion of napalm delivered at high pressure.

So yes, while dangerous, the flamethrower was a necessary tool of doing business, knocking aside a whole plethora of the usual anti-vampire defenses. Fully automatic assault rifles dealt with most of the rest rather handily, and explosives were always handy for when you had to take on a monastery or other site with serious mystic defense.

They also wore combat vests, helmets, and body armor of chainmail layered over more modern ballistic stopping material. A few former marines in the group joked that this was the *serious* incarnation of the phrase "When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight."

They didn't see much use, but then, they didn't need to. Having died in their prime they had little need for training, only blood. And between the prices they charged, and how thorough they were in destroying their targets, there was not much need for their services.

Anyone who could kill ten thousand demons in one night merited their attention, however.

Intel said the spell was one-night only, and chaos magic at that, so unlikely to be repeated. But despite that they really took no chances with this. Snipers got distributed around the area in concealment. Troops took up their positions, rockets, rifles and rpgs at the ready. They even had Stinger missiles poised to fire, just in case.

At the signal, four shots rang out, one into each of the parents sleeping off a drunken binge in the house, and two into the boy. Flimsy house walls gave no protection against fifty cal sniper bullets, nor concealment against thermographic scopes.

Bodies immediately started to cool. But, just to be sure, a second signal went out and their second door-knocker device began to approach - one of their number began to drive up in the street in a tremendous bulldozer.

Just because they couldn't enter a house without invitation didn't mean they couldn't knock it down. Then, in the absence of any house, they could carefully retrieve and ID the bodies. There was a reason they were professionals, and pulled in the big bucks, taking on targets even the Terakas said were 'Too Big'.

However, once the bulldozer came up, and one corner of the house had crumpled away before its blade without any sign of opposition, the overconfident vamps did as soldiers do anywhere when they feel the op is over and began to relax.

And that was what killed them.

Harmony landed behind the vamp with the flamethrower and twisted his neck, snapping it cleanly, before she turned his own flamethrower on and hosed the group of vampires that was forming around the house.

A dozen of them went up in flames at that moment.

The reaction was instant. Even before she'd begun hosing them down with the marionette-like body of the now paralyzed vampire's arms still holding the tube of his flamethrower, his buddies had turned and assault rifle fire flew at her like rain, impacting on the bracers she wore and reflecting around. Most of the vampires took ricochets of their own bullets. The pressurized tanks of fuel were also hit, and went up in a tremendous explosion.

Harmony stalked out of it sword in hand, completely unaffected by both flame and bullets, and dashed forward to behead another vamp, silently blessing that protection from artifacts ward they'd put up around themselves, as, unlike the vampires, some of the machines here could really have hurt them otherwise.

In other parts of the battlefield, Xander, Willow and Amy had appeared, doing their own damage at the same time as Harmony, using mage powers to telekinetically pop the pins out of grenades worn on vampire's vests or fire rpgs into the ground at the demon's feet before wading into those explosions with swords, unhurt by the shrapnel.

Walls of glare flashed and four vampires fell, incinerated down to ash. Willow, wielding the unnatural axe, took another two, cutting their heads clear off in a single swipe that also cut the swords they'd tried to parry with in half. The vampire snipers had already been taken out, as those creatures aren't any more prone to looking up than humans. Then the rest of the angels descended upon their foes.

The last one tried to run, racing towards the docks and a making for a shipping container in which the mercenary group had been delivered with their weapons. No sooner did he wrench the door open, however, than he went to ash, fireballed from behind, as Xander settled to the ground beside the now-dissipating cloud of dust.

"Thirty vampires," Amy stalked out of the darkness, none of the filth or smoke of battle able to cling to her, not a mote of dust on her or hair out of place as she said, "Half of them masters, all in the three to four power range, capable of doing more than a hundred points of damage to you combined, and that's *before* someone outfitted them with modern arms and all that armor." She looked at him soberly. "That's five times more than enough to kill a budding mage, even before they started to get funny about arming them. Somebody seriously wants you dead. And they want it badly."

Sophie sighed, also emerging from the darkness, and like the other angel completely spotless as she told her fellow Cordette, "If anything, I fear you understate the case. It is not *one* somebody that wants him dead. It's lots of somebodies. He's already stated he can feel there are bunches of enemy players out there. It only took one of them to order this hit."

Cordy felt less grumpy about this midnight fight than she felt she ought to be. "If not for your first strike ability alerting you to this attack, or Xander's putting an illusion of himself in his bed counting as a 'minor' magic trick... well, the results would have been scary."

"No," Xander disagreed, scared quippless. "The scary thing is that they seem to know how to find me. But I still don't have a clue about them."

"I think we're in trouble," Willow whispered softly, not wanting to say out loud her conclusion that Buffy could not have handled an attack like this - not if they'd had a dozen of her!

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Xander's just joined in the middle of a game that's been going for a long, LONG time, and even the youngest of the other players have had centuries to get established, so control vast resources, as in, *millions* of vampires and demons and other creatures, and entire continents worth of resources.

And each one of them is going to direct resources towards Xander that really ought to kill him, just to swat down 'the new guy' before he could develop into any kind of threat.

As for Giles and the Watchers, I figure originally, back when the Watcher's council was founded, they were a Blue/White organization, concerned with doing the right thing, and with studying magic. But they got corrupted, the white turning to black over time.

As for Giles personally, he is still very much into occult studies, so Blue, but he had a history of summoning demons to get high, and that very misspent youth left its mark upon him. A stain of black leaves you black until that gets removed, and, well, he's still got that mark upon his arm.


	4. Chapter 4

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Four

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

I feel I should say a word about the hit the Watcher organization ordered on Xander. People who are not trustworthy do not, in turn, trust others. And a corrupt organization believes that corruption is the norm. They do not have the faith to say things like, "Oh, well he's an angel. Obviously he wouldn't use those powers he got unjustly."

OoOoO

It was a quiet night. A peaceful night. The stars shone down in their tranquility on the scene, for, even in the wake of a major battle with thirty demons and despite rubble from the night before, it was, on average, the most serene night Sunnydale had seen for many a year.

Most of that had to do with the vast majority of the demon population having been roasted only just the night before, of course. Although a little touch-up work was done by the angels as they flew around about their business, pausing to slaughter a demon here or there as they encountered what few survivors had crawled out of hiding to feed.

With a quarter of Xander's house wrecked by the bulldozer, it was obvious he wasn't going to stay there the rest of that night. So they spent some time flying his belongings out of his relatively intact room through the window and over to one of the ivory towers he controlled.

It would have been Willow's place instead, as that trip was much shorter, but her parents were actually home for once, and she didn't want to explain having a boy sleeping over.

Still, the ivory towers were very nice, nor did it take them long to transfer everything.

"And your parents?" Willow asked once the move was done.

Xander was stoic. "I never once imagined they would be targets in this, or else I would have warned them and told them to move. However, they have now gone to their eternal reward - and whether that be good or bad, it is entirely their own doing."

They nodded. Being an angel gave one a unique perspective on death. It wasn't that big a deal, more like what side of a table you sat on during a meal.

"Well, goodnight," Willow waved and flew off back to her family, just as the others had already returned to theirs, leaving Xander on an ivory balcony looking out over Sunnydale alone. Turning, he went inside. It was a nice place, made of real ivory, like someone had carved out living quarters in the middle of a two-hundred foot tall tusk stuck upright in the ground. Loads of unnecessary curves in the architecture, but otherwise it was like a high-rise apartment building merged with a library, designed by someone who couldn't bear to be too far from his books, even in bed or a bath.

He was grateful for that last, as the Roman baths attached to his Libraries of Alexandria, while opulent, offered nothing in the way of privacy. Nor were they even segregated according to gender, and frankly, though he was as much a healthy young boy as anyone, being an angel meant no hanky-panky - or else!

No, it was marriage, or nothing, as far as sex life.

What really complicated things was the fact those magic receipts appeared to be actually binding, so he now had a harem. They'd really have to figure out exactly what that meant, since living up to his commitments was as important to an angelic creature as keeping his promises; and having led those girls to believe, even jokingly, he'd wanted them for his harem, when they signed on as harem members he was obligated to live up to his end of the responsibilities that entailed.

So, if sex was required, there would have to be some marriages coming up soon. And, as far as those were concerned, Willow had first right of refusal on him.

He'd have to ask her later.

OoOoO

Early in the morning, Xander groaned and rolled over in a big, overstuffed bed framed in dark hardwoods that contrasted nicely with the ivory white walls, pulled the quilted wool blankets closer to his cheeks, and nearly shrieked as he shot out of bed in alarm when a bark sounded in his ear.

Floating up near the ceiling, and noting not for the first time that angels had no need to flap their wings in order to fly, or even have those wings present, he looked down towards his attacker and noted only a snowy white owl with a letter clamped in her beak.

"Oh, hi Hedwig," he floated down to the floor, sheepishly. "Sorry if I startled you. I am not used to being woken in such a manner."

The way the bird ruffled her feathers, he could imagine the owl saying, "No, problem. I got it all of the time from Hermione."

Untying the letter, which was from Willow, as it turned out, he read from the thick parchment that his harem, as Willow termed those girls he'd turned into angels last night, would be over shortly to study together, discovering more about their powers before school this morning.

Looking out the window he discovered the police were camped outside his little block of libraries and towers, working themselves up to approach. He was unsurprised to notice that the entire Sunnydale Police Department read as a single one-two black creature. Enough to keep the victims in line, but wholly inadequate to confront a single vampire, even if they wanted to, which, with special abilities like 'conceal vampire crimes', he didn't think they did.

As he looked out the window, the swat teams charged in, his walls flashed, and the whole police department promptly got incinerated down to the last desk jockey back at the office.

Not surprising. A wall of glare was normally a zero-five creature. Not able to do damage, but very hard to destroy, and those were the stats his combo walls used because they were better than the walls of vapor had. But the Fortified Area enchantments he'd cast the other day each added one to the offensive punch of every wall he controlled, leaving it a four-five creature wholly capable of incinerating a master vampire.

And he had four of them, each with special abilities that made them effectively omnipresent, and untouchable in combat. They couldn't attack, but anything that attacked either him, his people, or anything belonging to them, was going to get fried.

The young man turned back inside to get ready for the day.

OoOoO

"So why is everybody avoiding the front doors?" Amy's cat asked, riding in her tote bag as they pulled up in their convertible.

"Already got the scoop on that one," Harmony reported, hopping out over her door without opening it just to glory in how easy it was to move her body around in highly athletic ways. "Sophie got here early, and gave me a call. Apparently, there were all these cops around, investigating the spot where our principal died yesterday, there came a flash, and all that's left of them are piles of ash, a few hats and badges. So the front doors are considered bad luck by the student body until further notice."

"Makes sense," Xander agreed, heading straight for the front doors, his girls giggling as they joined him to the horrified stares of the student body, some of whom actively diverted their gazes so they didn't have to watch the small group come to a grisly and untimely end.

Xander opened the door for his ladies and they all trooped through, nicely avoiding the piles of ash and fallen badges around the poorly cleaned puddle of blood on the floor.

Once inside, Xander caused his home room teacher to nearly faint, and start looking for an apocalypse, when he turned in all of the work that she'd assigned for that semester.

OoOoO

By lunch rumors were everywhere.

No one was going to admit to thinking 'body snatchers', but it was all anyone could talk about that Xander and several other of the not-academically inclined students had done a complete turn around and handed in all of the homework expected of them til Christmas, past due or not yet required, they'd turned it in.

If that was it by itself, it could have been dismissed as a minor ripple. However, all day Cordelia and her little gang of popular girls had been going around offering apologies to all of those they'd wronged, sneered at, or otherwise maligned.

Not even Sunnydale Denial Syndrome was enough to cover for that one.

"Sorry, I'm engaged," Cordelia showed off her gold ring to yet another popular boy who'd caught wind of the personality change and, now certain her acid tongue would not lash him to pieces and make a mockery of him in front of the student body, was daring to ask her out.

What happened next caused jaws to drop, despite it having gone on all day, as Cordelia smoothly rose from her seat, and took that same boy by the arm, leading him off, "But there is a girl I'd like you to meet. She's from our French class, and I think you'll get along fine."

Amy giggled.

Willow didn't stop there, placing her brown bag lunch neatly aside, standing tall, she allowed her own amusement to break out in song, wholly unconcerned with the audience her being in the middle of the quad automatically summoned. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match!"

"Find me a find!" Amy rose to join her.

"Catch me a catch!" they sang together.

Willow twirled away, holding out her arm so everyone could focus in on her golden ring. "Bring me a ring for I'm longing to be, the envy of all I see!"

Amy rather forcibly dragged Xander to his feet, which he accepted good-naturedly, as she sang, "For papa, make him a scholar!"

Harmony arrived from across the quad and, dropping a wad of hundred dollar bills in Xander's breast pocket, joined in singing, "For mama make him rich as a king!"

Amy and Willow then leaned together, clasping hands adoringly as they gazed at Xander, which Harmony quickly turned into a trio, "For me, well, I wouldn't holler if he were as handsome as anything!"

Amy now twirled over to hug Xander before he could make an escape. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, I'll bring the veil. You bring the groom, slender and pale."

Willow danced around Xander, twirling as though reading the textbook she held at the end of her arm. "Matchmaker, matchmaker look through your book, and make me a perfect match!"

Suddenly Cordelia and the rest of her Cordettes appeared, dancing in synchrony around Xander. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match! Find me a find, catch me a catch! Night after night in the dark I'm alone. So find me a match, of my own!"

Willow approached, demurely but with clear intent, singing to Xander. "Dear Yente, see that he's gentle. Remember, you were also a bride."

"It's not that, she's sentimental," Sophie joked.

"It's just that we're terrified!" Harmony jumped around Xander, hugging him from behind.

Laughing, they all dissolved into puddles of chatter and descended once more upon their food, completely unconcerned with the attention focused on them, so confident and secure in their own happiness the opinions of others could not bother them.

It was safe to say the social scene at Sunnydale High would never be the same.

OoOoO

"The funny thing about Giles is, he's so unconnected, everyone in school can know something, and he'll still be totally oblivious!" Willow announced cheerfully to her friends as they all left the library with armloads of purloined books, and Giles none the wiser. "But give him a dark creature no one has heard of in millennia, and he'll have it identified in moments!"

With Harmony around to copy everything, they'd already returned all of the books they'd gotten yesterday, and Willow was certain it was only a matter of time before they had all of Giles' collection.

In fact, she'd calculated exactly how many days before they did.

The whole group was happily chatting away a mile a minute, unafraid of themselves or their future in a way that no teenage kid had any right to be, when the whole group came to a stop as they ran into someone in the hall blocking their way.

"Hey, tall, dark and shady. What gives?" Xander quipped, eying him up and down, seeing names starting with Liam and Angelus before going off to include dozens of others, plus aliases and nicknames, before listing stats as a four-four master vampire. Black, of course.

"Because of you, Buffy is in the hospital," the vampire with a soul accused, plainly angry. "If not for you flying around I could have helped her, and I'm going to make sure you know how it feels to be helpless in the grip of a monster..."

The vampire lunged forward, only to dust instantly.

Xander tugged his sword free from where it had once more embedded itself in the wall after beheading his attacker. Stepping over the dust that used to be the Scourge of Europe, he quipped, "You know, what can we even call that guy? The word angel is taken, and plainly inappropriate for one of the walking dead anyway."

"I don't think we'll have to worry about it much," Willow beamed up at him, also stepping over the pile of dust as she followed him out.

"Yeah, but Buffy is eventually going to ask," Xander's voice trailed off down the hall.

"Why don't we tell her we're not sure, but he's probably still hanging around somewhere?" Harmony's voice drifted back, as air from the ventilation ducts caused the dust to swirl and eddy. "It's not like the body is much different, the dead parts just stick together less, and the person she thought she was in love with was always a ghost anyway."

Much laughter echoed back through the hall.

The small crowd of friends exited the school on the way to their car when students around them started screaming and running away in any odd direction their fear would take them. Looking up, Xander and his friends saw a small cloud of two-dozen six-armed flying insect demons with their own glowy-tipped alien spears descending upon them.

"It's like we can never get anything done around here without getting interrupted," Xander complained as he drew his sword.

OoOoO

The next two weeks were at a frenzied pace.

The day after the attack by insect demons came one by man-sized demon toads. On the day after that, Xander got struck by more than two dozen lightning bolts out of the clear sky. If not for the four sets of Urza's Armor they were wearing, each reducing all damage he took by a point per source (in this case, each individual lightning bolt, normally doing three points, was reduced by four), that could have really hurt him.

Actually, it would have killed any reasonable beginning mage twice over. But it was not without it's humorous side, as it came in math class just as the teacher had begun a lesson on probabilities, and was trying to show them the odds against something like a person being struck by lightning.

Funny, only now Xander's desk was slag, and he had people trying to enter him in lotteries.

The night after that was about a hundred vampires, which almost came as a relief, because the next day delivered Cthulu-like squid horrors rising up out of the surf and crawling up the beaches. Since each, individually had about the power of a bulldozer or main battle tank, and there came about thirty at a time, easily equaling that first assault of the soldier vamps in power, those really gave the impression someone didn't like him.

His walls had stopped them, of course. And while the walls held them at bay, incinerating some, Xander's angels and treefolk mauled the rest. Only six of the nightmarish monsters managed to struggle back into the sea.

But hey! In their advance, destroying everything before them, the squids cleared up lots of beachfront property! Loads of old, abandoned warehouses would never shelter vampires again.

Harmony bought up that property and made plans to build on it.

It was the night after that that things began to get serious. Just as there was Protection From Black, Protection From White also existed, creatures that could not be blocked or stopped or damaged in any way by anything even partly white.

Both the angels and Xander's walls qualified.

A gang of them came on the seventh night, twenty five black knights riding into town on motorcycles. And, as with the first assassination team, these had been heavily outfitted. They were heavily laden with enchantments and black weapons increasing their power.

Xander's treefolk managed to block and kill four of them, but both his walls and angels were unable to stop them. That's when they found that Xander was somehow both a creature, one of his own defenders at that, and a player at the same time.

His creature side was simply unable to act to defend himself as the attackers came for him, and as Amy explained it later, the actual players of a Magic game were helpless. If anything got to them, they could only sit there and take it. They could not defend themselves on any kind of personal scale, it was vast, world-affecting magic, or nothing.

So the black knights stormed his tower practically unopposed, broke into his bedroom, slashed and battered him, beating him like a rented drum before flinging him off his balcony, to leave him bleeding on the ground.

The night after came an attack by a dozen fully adult dragons, which came as a relief by comparison. However, Xander's walls, which they depended on to stop large numbers, could not fly or block flying attackers, so that was another night Xander lay bleeding and torn after the enemy had spent their rage upon his body.

After two weeks of these nightly attacks coming in ever increasing variety, Buffy finally got released from the hospital, and it was a somewhat different town she got released to. The police were dead, which coupled with the end of the nightly attacks on the general public had people making all sorts of odd connections.

Current theory had the police running a white slavery ring, faking deaths of the young and pretty so they could rush off and ship them to some sultan in return for bags of oil money.

In fact, it was so odd an occurrence that the body toll on the general public had just stopped practically the same night the police had died that on Buffy's release, she met up with her friends in a crowd as half the town had gathered to listen to the mayor give a speech on that topic. Although Buffy had to chase off the Cordettes when she arrived, a little envious at how much better they looked than usual. "Hey, guys. What's up?" she asked, once the female predators had departed without incident.

"Buffy!" Willow quickly dispensed a hug. "You're here! When did you get out?"

"Last night." the bleached blonde replied, fighting down a surge of jealously at how good they all looked, and tucking away a lock of her own too-long hair while plotting to get Willow to herself soon to discover what the new makeover secrets everyone was using were. "Mom picked me up. Ugh! Spent too long in the hospital, now I'm badly overdue for an appointment with my hairdresser. Say, I'd like to thank you guys for all the cards and visits."

Buffy felt shocked that this newly beautiful Willow didn't immediately shrink in on herself as she delivered this barb, as there *hadn't* been any cards or visits, either from her friends or from Angel, and it had both confused and hurt the slayer.

"Sorry we didn't get around to it, but it's been apocalypse season out here," Xander told her with a straight face. "We had an attack by adult dragons one day. Did you know there were still some dragons left around in the world?"

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Buffy felt hurt over being left out.

"We didn't want you to worry," Willow reassured, commencing with another hug.

"But! I'm the Slayer!" she protested.

Indeed, Xander had already noticed her stats. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a two-two white/black creature with the special ability of every time Slayer defeats a vampire with at least her own power and toughness, she gains a +1/+1 counter. So she literally got better by facing strong vampires, but the stronger she got, the nastier those vampires had to be. And, he noted to his amusement, she already had two counters. Probably would have had more, but you lost counters when you died.

He did wonder where the black had come from, since, as far as he knew, while Buffy was selfish and self-centered, she did not actually qualify as evil. But that was something to discuss with his girls later.

If it had been any other color, he might've asked Buffy then. But they had long since agreed that nothing black was to be trusted. So they'd keep this a secret, at least for now.

Conversation would probably have continued, but that was the time the crowd went quiet in expectation as the mayor took the stands. But as he got up to explain the people's fears away as groundless, Xander stiffened.

"What is it?" Cordelia whispered urgently in his ear, having come up on the other side as Willow diverted Buffy away on his first.

"The mayor," He hissed just as urgently back. "Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third, also the First and Second."

"So he's another dark creature?" she did not sound too surprised.

"No," Xander hissed, never taking his eyes off the man as he dismissed and used excuses to confuse the town's fears, in effect telling everyone to stick their heads back in the sand. "He's a player. We've finally found the first of my many opponents that are out there."

OoOoO

At school, Buffy was in for another set of shocks.

Her first thought was they'd simply arrive at the school, then go directly to the library to meet with Giles. Nothing could be further from what happened. They'd no sooner driven her there in their new car and parked than crowds of students were already surrounding them, eager to drag them away, off to hundreds of different invitations from swimming club to practice with the band, or just about everything in between that students could do at school without getting arrested - and even some invitations to do that!

In the face of that eager horde, it was impossible for Buffy to keep her friends by her side. They simply vanished off, dragged every which way in clumps or clusters of students, and even a few teachers, eager to be their friends.

Buffy's mouth was left hanging open.

She made the trip to the library in more or less total solitude and silence, having been stripped of her friendly escort long before they'd even reached the front door! "Giles?" she poked her head tentatively around the jam, concerned that she'd find the library filled with people and that he'd suddenly become Mr. Popular, too.

"Ah, Buffy. Good to see you back," the man poked out of his stacks to smile at her, and approach holding at least two books in his hands, shifting them to his left to greet her. "I can't tell you how much you have been missed."

"You could have told me in person," she somewhat spitefully replied, and was glad when the barb struck home and he winced.

"Yes, well, sorry about that, but I'm afraid something of an emergency has come up in your absence." The Watcher laid his books aside and began polishing his glasses.

"Yeah, I heard. A little old dragon," Buffy sighed.

Giles speared her with a stare. "Not 'A' dragon, Buffy. There were thirty of them, and they were not little, and fortunately not old. But I can name you kingdoms that were destroyed by a single dragon of that size. For that matter, England today would probably fall to an attack by five, and we had thirty. I can hope that gives you a sense of the scale involved."

Buffy emerged from her own angst over lack of attention focused on her to ask, "So, big dragons?"

"Your home would probably fit in a single footprint," Giles answered seriously.

"Ah," Buffy suddenly got a sense of the scale of the disaster he'd been trying to convey.

Giles resumed shuffling books. "Yes, quite."

"So, how am I going to fight dragons?" the Slayer perked, sure he had an answer.

"Haven't the foggiest," Giles replied, retrieving his stack of books to go sort more among the stacks. "For all you are The Slayer, you wouldn't make a mouthful to an adult dragon. Fortunately, they did not stick around, or else we wouldn't have a town, or probably even a place called California, anymore. But that was only one of the many attacks we've suffered. Every day it is something different."

"So why aren't Willow and Xander helping?" Buffy ran a finger down the spine of a dusty old book, with absolutely no interest in reading it.

"They are." Giles' voice was somewhat admiring. "Tremendously useful. Right now we are deeply involved in research into a new threat to the world the council has warned me about, and they are being a great help, checking out a stack new books every day." Giles poked his head back out of the stacks and confided, "I even confirmed, several times with Xander, they were reading them, having effectively given a pop quiz or two on their contents, and they passed with flying colors."

Buffy nodded, feeling remote and out of touch. Still, the research angle was being solidly covered. That was all to the good.

"Do you know anything else going on with them?" she asked, not thinking he would have noticed, but wanting to be sure.

"Willow told me they'd found some self-help books that were enormously beneficial in helping them overcome some confidence issues, and that was helping them in their school and social lives." Giles voice floated back, unconcerned. "And I say that's all to the good. It has certainly improved their study habits. Perhaps they'd let you borrow a copy."

"Thanks anyway," Buffy rolled her eyes and walked out toward class.

OoOoO

Buffy's feeling of being disconnected continued well on into the school day, as none of her usual friends had any time for her.

Still, it didn't take her too long to overhear some gossip.

An instant after plugging into the grapevine after so long, Buffy learned that Xander and Willow were friends with Cordelia! What's more, Xander and his Xander-ettes, as people had begun to call them, were easily the most popular students at school! And they hadn't gotten that way using Cordelia's old methods.

No, if anything , they were doing the opposite. After hooking up with Willow and Xander, Cordelia and her former Cordettes had become the kindest, sweetest, gentlest people around (obviously Willow's influence) but these girls were not only turning down dates from every popular boy in school, claiming to be engaged (and how likely was that, anyway?), they had been actively pairing up the students who hit on them with less popular girls, and quite successfully, leading to an explosion of couples.

And paradoxically, this was making them even more desirable in the eyes of many.

It wasn't just that they were more beautiful than even Cordelia and her popular crew could ever have aspired to, more beautiful even than girls straight out of the pages of magazines (who typically have all enjoyed hours of professional makeup, and all too often the help of touch-up artists using photoshop, on top of normal beauty - setting a ridiculous standard for real life girls to compete with).

But where any normal person with those kind of looks would probably become arrogant, stuck up, or inconsiderate towards others (and Cordelia and her crew had already achieved that before looking this good), instead they were the opposite, the very reverse of what Cordelia and her popular crew had been before. They were kind and approachable. People had even discovered they had an ability to simply stand quietly in the background and just glow with happiness over their friends succeeding at something. There could be nothing more beautiful than to behold someone incandescent with joy over seeing someone they cared for doing well. There was something holy about it.

As their new attitudes had become apparent a large number of the jocks and other boys at school had tried earnestly, every method they could think of, to get those girls to reconsider their engagements.

Buffy sat by herself in the quad at lunchtime, feeling very out of touch and alone as students literally swarmed around Xander and his new crowd of friends.

Everyone wanted to hang out with them.

"Oh, this is the good part," a mousy, brown-haired girl with glasses settled into the seat beside Buffy. At her questioning look, the girl nerd replied, "Oh, they're going to sing! They have voices like angels."

At the comment the Slayer no longer had the girl's attention, as the mousy girl was plainly settling in, attention all forward, like a devoted music lover about to get her fix, which she was. Somewhat ironic, too, as ask her two weeks ago and she would have been a country fan, not the classic stuff these types tended to do.

"Do you know them?" Buffy could not resist asking.

"Cordette watching has always been something of a hobby," the mousy girl confided. "It's been really amusing to me how before this they had this theme going where each girl was named after a virtue they *don't* have. Or didn't use to, anyway."

Seeing Buffy's puzzled look, she leaned closer and expounded, "Cordelia, whose name can mean 'heart' was heartless, Harmony promoted discord, Sofia, whose name means wisdom, was naive and trusted her friends way too easily. She's bottom of the totem pole and from time to time they used to play mean pranks on her, tricking her to do stupid things. She wouldn't even be a Cordette save for the fact her father owns the jewelry store where they all do their shopping, plus she knows her jewelry and is probably richer than any of them. Hope was like, her polar opposite, and the most bitter and cynical teenager I've ever seen, while Charity was a greedy bitch. All they needed was a girl named Faith who didn't trust anyone or anything and they'd have a complete set!"

At that moment, in Boston, a girl living on the streets sneezed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," Buffy finally focused in on the mousy girl, who smiled.

"My name's Verity, which means truth. I suppose if I lied all of the time and was rich, I'd have made a good Cordette."

Verity sighed, obviously star-struck. "But they're all *really* different now! It's beautiful! Since falling in with Xander, he made them promise to be nice, and it really shows. They can make anyone feel like they are on top of the world, and like anything is possible."

"Yeah. Great." Buffy pouted.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Credit where it is due, the idea of the Cordettes all being named after virtues they DON'T have was given to me by a reviewer by the name of arapto.

By the way, two of my brothers have coauthored a book. Adam and Enoch Ornstead wrote a book about environmentalists colonizing space, called The War of The Tree.

For those who are interested, it is available for download from Amazon, Lulu, and Apple's iBookStore (via Lulu).

At amazon dot com, put this after the slash /dp/B0071TJO2I

Core Cast

Primary Angel Group  
Xander, Willow, Amy and Harmony  
White Knight, Prodigal Sorcerer, Serra Angel combos with Artifact Ward and level ups from reading Book of Exalted Deeds and Libram of Silver Magic

5/5 white angel wizard knights with special abilities of flying, first strike, vigilance (does not tap to attack), deal 2 damage to any target without tapping once a turn, protection from artifacts and protection from black.

Secondary Angel Group  
Cordelia, Sophie, Hope and Charity  
Indomitable Archangel with level up from reading Book of Exalted Deeds

5/5 white angels with special abilities of flying and vigilance (does not tap to attack), also all artifacts Xander controls cannot be targeted by spells or abilities.

Primary Wall Group  
4 Wall of Glare, Wall of Vapor combos, boosted by Fortified Area enchantments  
4/5 white walls with special abilities of: can block any number of creatures, and damage done by creatures it blocks is reduced to 0. Also gained Banding, which allows controller to decide which of his creatures get hurt in combat, and how much.

Others  
Buffy, 2/2, White/Black, every time she defeats a vampire with at least her own power and toughness, she gains a +1/+1 counter (has collected 2 so far: random fledgling and The Master, lost the ones she'd collected before she died).

Watcher, 1/1, Blue/Black, while in play prevent one damage to target slayer, tap to give slayer first strike, sacrifice Watcher to give Slayer +2/+2 til end of turn.

Ethan Rayne, 1/1 Red, not even sure how to put his special ability into words.


	5. Chapter 5

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Five

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

Over the next two weeks the attacks continued to come hard and fierce. Cosmic horrors descended upon them, hags and nightmares, mixed in with more usual demons, vampires and other creatures of the night.

And that wasn't the worst of what hit them.

After a while, things more or less blended together, although the horde demon roaches was an interesting stand-out. As were the terrors that were so horrible no one even dared stand up against them to fight.

Amy explained that as the Fear ability. Only machines, or creatures out of horror movies themselves could stand to block them. And it turned out Black had a large number of dark and nasty critters with either Fear or Protection From White they were willing to attack with. Even a few invisible ones made the attempt, although those thankfully could be stopped by his very potent walls.

Still, he'd taken quite a battering.

So it was with great relief, that on the twenty-eight day since his last turn, Xander woke up knowing that he had his mana back on tap.

It was his turn today.

"Eleven attacks got through, each doing slightly more than twenty points of damage to poor Xander, on average," Amy announced sorrowfully from Xander's bedside, which had come to more resemble a hospital room with all of the machines and wires plugged into Xander himself, as well as the bandages covering his chest and general antiseptic smell. "Another round like that, and he's a goner."

Willow was hovering, concerned, by Xander's bedside. "What I want to know is: Why didn't Xander's Protection From Black protect him?"

The young redhead had, in the last twenty eight days, become an *expert* on the Magic game, studying it so that she could help out Xander. And it was confusing her that she did not understand what was happening.

"Ok, let's see if I can explain my theory," Sophie proffered her suggestion, breaking into the tumult of opinion, finally showing off that wisdom she was named for. "We've all read the For Dummies books for Business and Economics by now. So let's say, by way of example, that Xander were to start a corporation, of which, for whatever reason, he was the only member. Now from that point forward according to our law Xander would then be two separate legal entities. The Xander Corporation would have different rules and regulations apply to it than Xander, The Underage Boy. They would be taxed differently, and treated as different under the law - even though, we know, really, they are the exact same person."

Sophie offered them all a kind and intelligent glance. "I believe, with Amy, the same thing is happening here magically. The rules of the style of magic by which Xander draws his power apply differently to creatures than they do to players. Xander is both, but there are ways to make creatures irrelevant. So, under those circumstances, creature powers are unavailable to him. It's just like under our law that Xander, The Underage Boy could get a speeding ticket, even though The Xander Corporation could not, because different rules apply."

"So, in short," Willow summed up, "What you're saying is there are some things 'Creature Xander' can't fight, and against those, he is left on his own as 'Player Xander'."

"And all players are is punching bags if an enemy creature get through your blockers." Amy amended, nodding her head, as it made a twisted sort of sense. "He didn't even have any spells he could cast, as we'd already had him use nearly everything in his hand, and what little was left wasn't appropriate and he didn't have mana for anyway, as we'd had him use that up too."

"So?"

"Player Xander was helpless. No fuel, no ammo."

"Okay," Harmony breathed out. "So, just to make sure I understand this: There are creatures that can shut down Xander's creature abilities just like an anti-magic shell shuts down a D&D wizard?"

"Yes." Amy replied. "There are monsters a white creature simply cannot fight, so against those his abilities as a white creature just sort of shut down. So, yes, comparing it to an anti-magic shell is a good example."

"Okay, that's all I wanted to know." Harmony nodded.

Willow's head had shot up. "I want to know one thing more: How do we stop it?"

Amy spread her hands helplessly. "We'll know what our options are once Xander draws more cards."

That was something they'd all been eager for, since he hadn't been able to draw another card until it was his turn again.

"Shower first," the young man groaned, peeling bloody bandages off his body and unplugging wires from the medical machines they'd had monitoring him. Willow was eager to help him. All the rest stood silent in respect to his suffering.

"How is he even alive?" Cordelia asked, once they had disappeared into the bathroom. Willow had been washing him for days. They'd all seen him gnashed by jaws that had bitten a tank in half.

Now if only that had been an isolated event!

"Short answer?" Amy groaned and stood up, walking out to the balcony where dawn's early light was just starting to shine over the horizon. "He packed on lots of life."

"Longer form, please," Cordy requested without malice or annoyance.

Amy breathed deeply, smelling dew, still looking out over the early dawn. "Before you joined us, he played a card called Angelic Chorus that gives him extra life according to how many creatures he brings into play."

Sophie cocked her head. "So, what are the numbers?"

Amy turned her back on the still shadowed streets to come in out of the cold night air. "When he first picked up that deck he got twenty life, because that's what new players always start out with. Then he lost fifteen of that as the price he paid to get more land under his control quickly, leaving him with five life. Then he played four Angelic Chorus cards, so whenever a creature comes into play under his control, he gains life equal to its toughness - only that's FOUR TIMES that toughness in life because he had four Angelic Choruses."

She raised her eyes to look at them. "So rather than explain all of the details, he started out with twenty, lost fifteen, got eighty from summoning treefolk, got sixty four more when he made the first four of us angels, got another eighty again from summoning his walls, and then finally an extra sixty four from transforming you other four into angels. So he ended his first turn with a final tally of two hundred and ninety three life."

She sighed and flopped into a seat, facing all. "Which would have been great, except for twenty-seven days straight now we've been facing off attacks, Every One of Which, was set up to do, at minimum, a hundred points of damage!"

"We've blocked what we could, and endured what we must," she spoke as if to the ceiling. "And those things that broke through our defenses, the Urza's Armor did a great deal to minimize the damage of. Attacks that ought to have hit him for a hundred or more usually did only about twenty. So it's thanks to that, and our blocking everything we could, that he's alive today. But saying 'that was close' is an understatement!" she concluded firmly.

She found no disagreement from them.

"How much life has he still got?" Harmony asked softly.

"Seven," Amy told her ominously. "It would be in the negatives, and he would already be dead, if we hadn't set up our own little ICU for him here. That helped him recover a point or two after being savaged in the most recent attacks, and proved that cards aren't the only thing that can affect his health. Thank Heaven."

Really, it was amazing what you could do, slapping a few emergency room doctors in the face with wads of cash. Of course, it helped that, thanks to those For Dummies books, they all had equivalent to nursing degrees, as well as pre-medical studies. So those doctors they'd hired to sew him back together after the attacks had had plenty of assistants.

There came a long, low whistle out of one of the Cordettes.

"Yeah." Amy rubbed her eyes, wiping the tears out. "Against attacks that do over a hundred, seven isn't going to last very long. No matter how good our intentions at keeping him safe, something big has got to happen to help Xander out this round, or he isn't going to live to see a third."

Faces were pale.

"And last turn we had an Ancestral Recall, which he used to get twelve more cards," Sophie observed. "But there is no chance we'll draw another one of those. So, while our first turn got him seventeen cards, this turn is probably only going to be five - the one from a normal draw, plus four more from his libraries."

Concern was evident everywhere, as that didn't seem like nearly enough, considering how close everything had already been.

Nobody had to mention the shattered ruins of what used to be his treefolk, standing outside that tower, their trunks splintered, having been sacrificed to save Xander in one of the most recent attacks, sent out to combat creatures they could not possibly defeat, or even survive against, just to spare some of the last few remaining points of Xander's life.

One of the treefolk had been felled earlier, to an attack by something they didn't even have a name to that turned out to be surprisingly dangerous. And Xander had run out of mana to regenerate his loyal soldier.

The other three had fallen just last night. The corpses of three giants lay still cooling beside them. Just like those motorcycle knights that were the first attack to get through, evil magic had been used to increase their power. In this case, the cyclopses had been so hopped up on enchantments they had done nine damage apiece, any one of those getting through would have dropped Xander down to dead.

He had seven life now, but that was after recovering two from treatments last night.

When it had come down to a choice between either the treefolk living, or Xander, it had been an obvious choice - but not an easy one. Yet given the choice again every last one of those girls would do it the same way, if they had to.

"So, we just hope he gets lots of big creatures to summon for more health... right?"

"That would be a start," Amy admitted.

"The problem with that," Hope surmised, "Is that in having done these attacks our enemies must have learned of the weak points in Xander's defenses. Lots of creatures, successful or not, survived to go back and report what they saw here, what we used to stop them, and how. And from attacks that got through even better information will filter back. Those players at least will know exactly what to attack with next time, to do a better job."

Hope gave a bouncy shrug. "All that said, I'm sure something will come up. Heaven does not abandon its own during their times of need."

Charity shivered and hugged herself. "I just wish Xander weren't so helpless in the face of so much of this!"

"Not entirely helpless," Xander spoke, standing in the bathroom door, dressed for the day, Willow still keeping close to his side as she assisted him into his bedchamber. "I've noticed that my magic will only allow my attackers to do me so much harm before it kicks in and makes them think I'm dead, or pops me to another location where they can't find me until they've gone, or whatever."

"Game rules," Amy nodded. "An attacking creature can only do damage equal to its power before it has to retreat. It looks like the magic that made you what you are is enforcing that. Otherwise, many of those attackers wouldn't have left without taking your head as a trophy, no matter how long it took them whacking on you to get it."

"Agreed," Xander whispered softly, groaning slightly from pain as he sat once more upon his bed, Willow lowering him there tenderly, with Hope and Charity joining her to assist.

Harmony made a "come here" motion with one finger and her copy machine floated into the room, to settle beside some of the medical equipment. Then Cordelia opened up the wall safe and reached in, hand emerging with a silver tray on which sat Xander's deck of cards.

It was time to draw.

Breaths were held in anticipation.

For the first time in nearly a month, a card came free of the deck into Xander's hand when he tried to draw. "Angel's Feather," he declared, reading aloud. "An artifact that lets me gain one life every time any player casts a white spell. Normally costs two colorless, but with my four Stone Calendars each reducing the colorless mana price of each spell I cast by one, it goes down to the minimum, which is zero."

"Copy first," Harmony commanded calmly, holding out her palm for the card, and Xander just as calmly handed it over.

When she returned four of it moments later, Xander placed them beside the three uncast Fastbond spells left over from the last round, and stated calmly, "Now I have seven cards in my hand, and choose to activate all of my Libraries of Alexandria for another card each."

The anticipation was tense. Angel's Feather, while nice, did nothing anywhere near the scale they needed to spare Xander's life until the next round. So whether he lived or died was up to these next few cards.

He read them in sequence. "Llanowar Elves, a one-one green creature that I can tap for green mana."

Amy tried to console herself that even a one toughness creature, if they summoned four of it, then between the four Angelic Chorus cards already in play, that would grant Xander an extra sixteen life.

It wasn't much on the scale they needed, but it was something.

"Sigil of the Empty Throne. An enchantment, that every time I cast an enchantment I get to put a four-four white angel token with flying into play."

Willow was already calculating. "He can cast that four times. The first won't trigger on itself because it wasn't in play before it was cast. But when he casts the second, the first will give him an extra angel. Then on the third, the first two will trigger, granting him two more, and on the fourth all of the previous three will grant him an angel apiece. One plus two plus three," she counted to confirm, then raised her eyes bright with joy to the others. "That's six angels and ninety six life he'll get just out of casting that card alone!"

"YES!" Amy, Cordelia, Hope and Charity cheered together, quickly hugging one another. It wasn't perfect, but more flying defenders meant almost as much as the life he would gain by his putting new toughness four creatures into play.

Now all they needed was a few more enchantments to play to fuel that card's ability.

"You forget, he's got those Angel Feathers, too," Amy instructed, still hugging her friends. "It won't help on the Llanowar Elves, because that's a green card, but that Sigil enchantment counts as a white spell, so casting four of it means an extra sixteen life for Xander just for having cast four white spells with four Angel's Feathers in play!" Paradoxically, the Angel's Feather itself did not count as a white spell, but the game could be odd like that.

"Cast it now!" Willow pleaded, tugging on Xander's shoulder.

"Not yet," Xander shook his head. "Let's wait until we have all the information. Order matters. There might be some combo that would make it even better, like those Angel's Feathers."

Harmony would have joined all of this celebrating. However, her attention had been caught by something else. "Hah!" she laughed, reaching to the shelf above Xander's bed. "Figures that today would be the day those lights stopped blinking."

And with that announcement, she brought down the pokeballs, beaming at everyone. And they knew why. On the day those dragons had attacked so long ago, Xander had insisted they stop short of killing six of them, just knocked them unconscious then trapped them in these pokeballs that they'd found in Ethan's shop the first day.

And now those balls were reporting their contents had stopped struggling and were ready to serve him.

Harmony beamed. "Six new angels, with these six dragons... We have now doubled your defense force, my liege! Both in numbers, and in power."

It was in a considerably lighter mood that Xander drew his next card. "Spellbook, an artifact that costs zero to play, and removes any limit to number of cards I hold in my hand."

"A very good card to have in combination with the Ivory Towers you are now living in, which grant you extra life at the start of your turn equal to the number of cards in your hand, minus four, with a minimum of zero extra life. Not so bad a card under the normal hand limit of seven, but can quickly get potent without that limit," Sofia broke her silence to prove that she, too, had studied the rules and cards of this game during the past twenty eight days.

Others had dabbled, but Sofia and Willow had almost made a career out of it. Both for virtually the same reason, as well.

Helping out Xander was Sofia's primary priority, but it was Willow's only one.

And now for the last card. Xander drew and read it, then smiled, showing it off to the rest of them. "I think we just won. This is Verduran Enchantress."

Amy wracked her brain hard to figure out what he meant about winning. For all she recalled, the Verduran Enchantress was just a one-one green wizard card that...

Oh dear. He was right. That was victory!

"A zero-two green creature," Harmony read aloud to everyone else as she went to copy it, and proving Amy's guess about it being a one-one to have been a faulty memory. "With the special ability of 'whenever you play an enchantment, draw a card'."

Action stopped as everyone considered that.

"So, wait," Cordelia asked. "Let me make sure I've got this right. First Xander plays this enchantress, then the angel feather just for kicks, and when he plays that Sigil of The Empty Throne we're all so excited about..."

"He draws four more cards," Hope concluded gladly.

"Per Enchantress," Sofia corrected. "And since he has four of them, that's sixteen cards he draws for every enchantment he plays."

"And so far this deck has been *rich* with enchantments." Amy glowed with happiness. "The chance we won't find another in the next sixteen is slim at best."

"And that starts the cycle over again," Willow beamed, snuggled into Xander's side all this while, but cuddling him extra good now she was filled with hope and gladness.

"That's it," Cordelia stepped forward, presenting herself. "Xander, I've loved helping keep you alive. You brought me to life for the first time. Nobody ought to know better than I do how empty and hollow existence as a social predator can be. I wasn't even human until you made me an angel. Now I help those I once ridiculed, and am loved by everyone who once hated me. Some, I'm sure, would even die for me, if I asked them to, which I won't; and I never could have imagined, back when I thought I was making points by putting them down, how much better kindness to others would make me feel."

Cordelia wiped tears away from her eyes, yet smiled though them to him. "It has been a revelation, living this way, and I don't want to give that up. So I don't want you to lose. Your life has become precious to me, so... I'd like to be your first Enchantress. Please, as much as I've loved being your bodyguard, I want to help be responsible for your victory."

Sofia, Hope and Charity lined up with her, all had similar smiles on their faces.

Willow and Amy had dew running down their faces over the bravery of their friends.

Harmony beamed to him as she presented the newly copied cards.

Xander quickly charged up the Verduran Enchantress card, applying it in a flash of brilliant emerald light. Hugs and kisses got presented all around as Amy and Willow took turns completing the combinations of their friends.

The Angel's Feather came next, then it was time for the starring event.

Phones came out.

Calls were made.

"Hi, Verity? This is Cordelia. Yes, I know how early it is, but it is very important to me. I would take it as a personal favor if you would come to this address, as soon as you are able. Yes. Uh huh. I'll tell you what, come, and I'll make sure you ace all of your school subjects this year. No, no cheating involved. I'll study with you until you know them as well as I do. Yes, the offer is real. Alright, I'll see you here. Half an hour is good. Bye."

"Please," Willow begged into her phone. "It's really important. I wouldn't ask otherwise."

Others were, most of them, experiencing similar difficulties convincing their people to get out of bed at this early hour.

Harmony's call was a great deal more perfunctory, having set it up in advance. "Mercy? It's time. No, I hadn't forgotten. Get yourself here in the next half hour, and you'll be a Xander-ette just like the rest of us. Actually, no, I don't see that mattering. So what if you can't slip out? I wouldn't dream of stopping you from bringing all of the girls of your sleepover. The more, the merrier. Do you need help transporting them? No? Alright, see you then."

Sophie's call was similarly short. "Sis? Hi. Today's the day. Can you make it? Fine, see you in twenty. Don't forget anyone." She closed the phone, announcing, "My four sisters are on their way."

"My book club," came the agreement.

"The girls from the band."

"Half a dozen of my former wanna-be Cordettes," Cordelia chimed in.

"And it sounds like the entire girls swim team."

Willow did a quick tally. "It sounds like we are getting close to a hundred people."

Hope huffed in the aftereffect of hard work, smiling for the rest as she posed, "Hopefully that will be enough."

It had not escaped anyone's notice that, if Xander were to summon more creatures, then he would need more people to serve as vessels for the powers he was about to give them. So, among other things, their making friends at school had laid an effective groundwork for this day.

It was a trifle early to call most people. However, if you are genuinely loved by someone, they'll get up in the early Am for you, even if they are high school students. They may grumble about it, and they won't want to make a habit of it, but they'll do it all the same.

Dishes clinked as a breakfast cart got brought in. Angels leap to help distribute dishes.

During one of those dark days recently past, they had put the animated plushy of Barney, The Purple Dinosaur into the Playboy Bunny costume as a joke to help cheer up Xander, only it hadn't worked out like anyone had expected.

Now they had Bianca, the purple-haired bunny-girl.

They'd hired her as a maid because, well, the poor dear wasn't very bright, and looking like a girl out of Japanese anime, all curvy and with obviously nonhuman rabbit ears and tail, as well as having no records or modern skills. It was just kinder to keep her around the place, helping out with the cooking and things, even if brainless bimbo was the only job she'd really been suited for before they'd began reading aloud those For Dummies books to her.

Poor dear still couldn't read by herself. But now she was like everyone's ditzy younger cousin. She helped out mostly by her bright and bubbly and cheerful attitude.

Oh, and bringing Xander breakfast in bed, and oftentimes lunch and dinner too. The rest of the girls may have been qualified nurses, but they also had day schedules, and with the explosion of professional assassins crawling all over town since the Watcher's council had made their play, entering a small army, plus extra new Slayer into town a couple of days ago, it wasn't wise to take too many days off of school, as people willing to hire professional killers usually had folks who excelled at picking up on clues like that.

Xander had a certified medical excuse. Everybody thought he was a circumstantial victim, having been too close to one of the recent attacks (which was a true, if misleading, way to put things. Being the target of an attack put him much too close to it).

But the rest of them did not.

Thankfully, they had Bianca to cover for them in the meantime. Thanks to the books, she'd become a decent cook, and they didn't need help with the cleaning. Pop the Lamp of Mr. Clean once or twice a day (depending, largely, on if that day's fight got indoors), and they were good.

Sure they were about to have an interesting morning, the boy and his girls settled into their shared breakfast experience largely in silence, but with ever brightening hope.

OoOoO

As she grumbled, completing her early morning patrol, Buffy was learning just how easy she'd had life as The Slayer.

She kicked a stone out of her path, feeling rebellious.

The way she'd always seen it, being the mystically empowered one with all of the super-strength and stuff put her in charge. That's the way it always was with the Justice League. The ones with the biggest superpowers ran the show, and if anyone without superpowers was around, they did fetch and carry for the real heroes.

She'd been important. She'd been the one in charge. She'd been the leader.

Then THEY came!

And now she was learning the Watchers did not see things that way at all. No, not one bit.

Giles was a big softy. She'd had it easy with him. He was, like, this indulgent father figure, even when he tried for stern more often than not he hit silly with those funky British quirks of his, and it really wasn't hard to get him to let her do whatever she wanted.

The new guys in charge meant business. They gave orders, and expected to be obeyed. And the one time she'd tried to blow them off and reassert her independence...

First, there had been about fifty firearms pointed in her direction that first second. Then, it had been very calmly pointed out to her that they had wetworks assassination teams crawling all over this town, and it wouldn't be the work of a moment to divert them off of the sorcerer-hunting mission, to a Slayer-hunting one.

She shivered, recalling that occasion, and clapped her arms in her jacket for extra warmth, not even looking up to appreciate the glorious pre-dawn light.

When she'd been shocked at the sudden rifles, this new Watcher guy had even laughed in her face and declared the real reason behind the policy of never arming the Slayers with modern arms or armor was to make them easy to take out if they ever went rogue. Guns were their wooden stakes, holy water and crosses for taking her out, should they ever feel that was necessary.

They would have their slayer a proper, obedient servant, or they'd call one who would be.

The guy had been so matter-of-fact about killing her he'd actually terrified Buffy, who'd been staring down the barrels of about fifty assault rifles at the time. And, come to think of it, she didn't have any super powers that made her bullet proof.

She'd saluted and started taking orders promptly.

Two patrols, sometimes three a night. Catch a nap in the afternoon, then repeat. They'd made no secret about watching her carefully for signs of rebellion. She even had a few new houseguests, and wasn't *that* something hard to explain to her mom!

Vehicles kept her under surveillance during her walks through town, on patrols, or going to and from school. Nothing else was allowed, no friends, no dates, no social life. Not like that was much different, she felt, feeling sorry for herself, with the rest of the Scoobs so busy they barely talked to her now. And she hadn't seen Angel in nearly a month, since before Halloween, and was starting to give up on the hope he'd ever contact her. She'd started to wonder if he'd died that Halloween, when so many other vampires got destroyed.

She'd heard through the grapevine that Xander had gotten injured. That came as no surprise to her. Guy was always getting in the way and being injured. Perhaps now he'd learn how it felt to stay in the hospital and not get visited.

Partly she wanted to feel vindicated, putting him through something she'd suffered, but mostly she had to admit, she didn't have any choice. Her new schedule was running her ragged, and she couldn't even really see the point!

Hunting was rather slim. Come to think of it, it was not just Angel pulling another vanishing act, she hadn't seen ANY demons or vampires this past month! Going on patrols was like fishing in an empty swimming pool - there just wasn't anything there to catch!

Oh, there had been these major attacks going on nightly, only she hadn't been involved. If anything, those only reinforced her feelings of irrelevance. Those were like, The Clash of The Titans, Hollywood style battles between pagan gods, and the powers that had always made her feel so comfortable in her own superiority felt pretty insignificant by comparison.

Buffy had stopped by the aftermath of one, just a little earlier. And she'd seen one of those cyclopses that had died last night. Even standing on her feet in heels while the corpse lay on its back on the shattered and messed up street, she could not manage to reach up to touch the guy's nose, not unless she'd wanted to climb his ear to do it.

It had been a humbling realization. She wasn't as tall standing up as that giant was laying down. The club it had wielded had enough wood in it to probably build her house. And he may even well have more mass of armpit hair than she did to her whole body!

At this point, she really couldn't imagine killing such a thing, and it did not help her recapture her feelings of being the most the most super-awesome, important thing on the Hellmouth, seeing someone else had.

The confident self-assurance that she could handle anything... just wasn't there anymore.

Giles was no help, either. It hadn't taken these new guys a day to take soft and silly Giles off active duty and stuff him back among the library stacks as a full-time researcher, telling him quite clearly there would be no more pampering Slayers for him!

Buffy sighed, repeating the new mantra the Watchers had given her inside of her head: Her life was the mission, and the mission was her life. It was hunt supernatural predators or die, to be replaced by someone who would.

The strangest thing was this other Slayer, Kendra, seemed to thrive on it.

Buffy was too busy, focused on her growing depression, to notice an unusual amount of cars driving by for that hour, all going the same direction.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Originally, I was thinking that I could knock out their first turn in two chapters, with maybe a bit overflowing onto the top of three. Then I could handle the other turns in a chapter apiece, more or less. Obviously, it didn't happen that way.

Five chapters in, and I've only barely begun his second turn. But I still have both a very clear idea where this is going, and how it will end.


	6. Chapter 6

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Six

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

"Got a tally?" Amy asked from the sidelines.

Charity had been peeking out through a set of curtains, looking down over a balcony over the main floor of Xander's largest library, where a large crowd had gathered, despite the early hour. Harmony was stuck down there greeting them all as they arrived and probably had the official numbers, but an estimate would do until they could talk to her.

"Over a hundred people. Mostly girls, though not all," came her response.

Hope gave an amused huff. "And that is largely the case because it's getting increasingly hard for us to be around boys without having to constantly spurn their advances. So we can't casually invite them to things, for fear of them buying rings and proposing."

"Again," Cordelia had, through divine effort, remained merely amused by this phenomena. Some people just could not accept no for an answer, and it had a tendency to wear at one's patience, especially when those boys had already been introduced to girls who'd suit them better. Marriages were strongest between equals, after all.

"And again, and again," Hope and Charity agreed.

But Amy had already retreated to carry the news back up to Xander's bedroom. She was back down in moments. "Ok. They are ready now. Bring up the first six."

Cordelia nodded and went off to fetch her proto-Cordettes.

OoOoO

Cordelia entered Xander's room followed by Verity and five other girls to find him sitting up in bed, braced by pillows.

Shock was the first reaction of those girls, followed by concerned well-wishes.

Xander accepted them gratefully, then explained, "Something is going on. I'm sure you've noticed. What it boils down to is that I have been granted ability to, among other things, turn people into angels. The real, genuine article."

Cordelia, Willow and Xander all took this opportunity to forestall arguments over the matter by simply manifesting their wings and halos.

"That explains a bunch of things," Verity allowed, after a stunned silence.

"Like how?" One of her friends asked.

Verity shrugged. "I'm sure you must have noticed how these guys have *incredible* action economy. They never seem to rush or hurry, but they get tons of stuff done. It doesn't even seem to phase them to do a full on term paper in a couple of minutes, and that's *while* they are talking and socializing with half of the students crammed in the quad?"

"I have noticed they never seem to worry about homework, but always get it done early," that friend allowed. She'd taken part in the Cordette-watching too.

"Well, there you go. They are the most efficient people I've ever seen." Verity testified. "You know how much normal people fumble for a pencil, or waste time searching through her purse, or forgetting something in their locker and having to go back for it? Well, since Halloween, none of them have been doing any of that. They don't spill things, or lose things, or forget them. It's like, they're always cool and composed, doing just exactly the right thing at just the right moment to get maximum effect for minimal effort. Frankly, it was making me so envious I halfway wanted to change my name to Nadda, a name meaning generosity, so I could start my own neo-Cordettes," she half-joked.

"Doesn't stop you from listening to them sing in the quad," her friend jabbed her in the ribs.

"Well, yeah. There is that." Verity blushed, then addressed Xander, "It's actually a relief to hear you are angels. Now I don't have to be all anxious over 'I can never compete with that' because I'm not supposed to. Everyone expects angels to be perfect. Mortals aren't."

"Thank you for the compliment," Xander smiled. "It's nice to feel appreciated. Although, on that note, no jealousy is required. As I believe I just stated, I am in control of magic that can make people into angels."

"Sign me up!" Verity eagerly volunteered. The other five quickly followed likewise.

"You might want to cover your eyes," he advised, bringing a card up. "It gets a little bright."

Very soon everyone was protecting their eyes from the brilliant white light. Harmony, who had been downstairs, miraculously arrived just in time to take that card and copy it, multiplying the glow.

"Now, if our experience with this is right," Xander informed them all, "While this first card here won't do anything to you, the next should start transforming you into angels."

The first Sigil of The Empty Throne came down.

Anticipation built.

Then came down the next.

His audience tensed. Five girls closed their eyes and leaned forward, greatly anticipating their upcoming transformation, while one kept her eyes open, wanting to watch.

Instead of transforming one of them, however, a new angel appeared in midair, materializing out of the aether, wings spread and smiling.

"What happened?" Cordy was flummoxed.

"Token creatures!" Amy slapped her forehead. All eyes went to her, but it was Willow who piped up to explain.

"That's right!" the redhead blurted out in sudden understanding. "Cards can be anything, but in a game where every card is precious, tracked and special, they came up with the game mechanic of tokens to answer the awkwardness of 'what do you do when one card brings more than one thing into play'? They've got to be tracked differently. So one card can't be four different creatures, because different things could happen to each one. So they came up with tokens to represent 'this is another one of that'."

"And apparently," Amy finished off for her, "While we need real people to bring card based creatures into play..."

"We don't need any such thing to invest the power of token creatures," Willow finished her sentence for her.

"OH!" Amy breathed in realization. "That's it, isn't it? In this game, cards have value. They can be bought or sold or traded, and their rarity increases the price. Wasn't that what Xander said, the first time we copied one? These cards basically were money? But tokens can be anything, from pennies to bits of glass or plastic. Even pocket lint can serve as a token."

"So, to get a card creature into play requires real value, a person in other words to have the power invested in," Willow saw where this was going and surmised, then finished off with a smile. "But token creatures don't."

Xander nodded his head. "Well, a promise is a promise. Don't worry, girls," he addressed their new recruits. "I'm confident we'll draw new angel cards to be able to transform you in a moment. There will just be a little wait, I'm sure. Although I do apologize for the delay."

Reassurances quickly got offered that it was alright.

With that, he rather hurriedly brought the other enchantments into play, bringing the tally up to six angel token creatures, who, to be honest, came off as a little bland personality wise.

The life he gained from doing that, however, had him up and off life support, feeling hale and healthy for the first time in two weeks.

He also drew sixteen more cards.

"Castle!" He spotted the first enchantment in that number, after having flipped through three other creatures (none of them angels) and a land.

"All untapped creatures you control get plus zero-plus two," Amy recited from memory as Harmony accepted the card to copy. "With four of those, we'll all get plus eight to our toughness! We could stop those giants from last night easy!"

"Island Sanctuary is even better for our purposes, I think," Xander felt immense relief as he read the next card, as not only was it an enchantment, but it just solved the majority of their creature problems.

Since nobody there had it memorized, he read aloud, "Skip drawing a card: Until the start of your next turn, only creatures with flying or islandwalk can attack you."

There came an explosion of celebration at that news.

"What's going on? What did I miss?" Sophie popped into the room, fresh from speaking to her sisters downstairs, trailing Hope and Charity along with her while Bianca took care of the raw recruits, giving the angels a private moment together by serving breakfast to all of their guests. Once it got explained, she groaned aloud at the relief that brought. Seeing the questioning looks in Hope and Charity's eyes, she explained, "There are any number of special abilities available in this game, and it isn't all that hard to find creatures with one or two to overcome just about any obstacle. There are creatures who can't be blocked by walls, ones who can't be blocked except by walls, ones who are just plain unblockable, creatures who can't be blocked by white creatures, and so on."

"And over the past month or so it feels like we've faced most of them," Cordy quipped.

"However," Sophie agreed with her sister angel with a nod, "While it's easy enough to find any ability you like, and there's loads of them..." she pursed her lips, thinking how best to put this. "The moment you start asking for combinations of abilities, options are scarcer."

"You see," Willow broke in, eager and excited. "Special abilities are significant. Getting even one represents a big investment of time and energy. So having two is less common. As an example, you know how it seems like there are zillions of doctors and lawyers in the world? Well, how many can you think of who are both doctors *and* lawyers?"

"There are some," Cordy admitted. "But they are rare."

"That's what makes having the Island Sanctuary so significant," Amy instructed them all. "As we have learned, to our cost, our enemies have many creatures who possess abilities that allow them to bypass our defenses..."

"But there are a lot fewer creatures who have both Fear *and* Flying, than just Fear alone!" Cordy responded, getting it.

"Exactly!" Sophie, Amy and Willow chorused as a trio, then openly giggled over doing it.

"You want something that has Protection From White? You have options," Sophie agreed. "But you want that *and* flying? There are fewer."

"LOTS fewer!" Willow gloated.

"Flying is something we are increasingly able to deal with, and Islandwalk is a rare special ability that never really got implemented much in the first place, and fell out of favor shortly thereafter. So there aren't many creatures who have it," Amy instructed with an open smile.

"What did it do?"

"Creatures who possessed it were unblockable when attacking someone who controlled any islands. There was one of those for each basic land type: plainswalk and forestwalk, and so on. Picture someone who was so super sneaky, so expert on creeping across a certain type of land, there was just no chance of stopping him before he hit his target."

"Batman would have Gotham-walk," Sophie quipped with a smile. "While in Gotham, there really isn't much chance of stopping him from getting anyplace he wants to go. So you'd best just plan for him to break in to your hideout and beat you up."

"Alright," Charity nodded her understanding.

"It would have made sense if someone with islandwalk could block something else with islandwalk, since sneaky people know the tricks and how to catch other sneaky people, but they never set it up that way," Amy admitted. "If you've got islands, someone with this ability can't be stopped."

"Good thing Xander doesn't have any islands, then!" Sophie agreed.

"Actually," Xander broke in from where he'd been quietly drawing cards. "I just drew Tropical Island, and it says it counts as both an island, and a forest. It can be tapped for either blue or green mana, it says."

Amy just shook her head and whistled. "One of the original dual color lands. Wildly popular with everybody. It gave access to two colors without disadvantages. For years and years they refused to print any nearly as good. You've sure got some expensive cards in there."

"It's not like I mind," he returned with a grin.

"True," she quipped.

The young man hopped out of bed. "Well, that's it for this sixteen. We have a load of creatures (only one angel, unfortunately), two enchantments, and a couple land. I'm a bit surprised not to see any artifacts in this, since we've seen quite a few of those so far. But it's time to draw new cards, I think."

There truly was no inherent need to cast all of the Island Sanctuaries, because one did the same work as all four. However, since they got extra angels for every enchantment played, and extra life for each angel, and since casting four of the same spell cost them the same as one, thanks to the copier, they very much wanted to cast all of them!

Some very intense flashes of light followed. Thirty two new angel tokens appeared, and Xander's health shot up nicely.

Having played enchantments, in the form of first Castle, then Island Sanctuary, Xander was ready to draw more cards when there came a ripple in the fabric of reality and Cordelia, Sophie, Hope and Charity all went down screaming, their flesh turning amorphous and like jelly, losing color and cohesion, as though they were melting.

Xander grabbed for Sophie, to steady her while her legs went to jello, and that was all he knew until he came to on the floor moments later.

He sat up, rubbing his head, and smiled reassuringly when he saw Amy's wide, panicked gaze. "I'm alright. Do you know what happened? The moment I touched Sophie I went all confused, like when we were first combining ourselves with other cards."

"A moment to get over the panic, please." Amy requested, clutching her wand to her chest, something that Xander had not seen in nearly a month. Then the flare of a white wing being stretched caught his eye, and his expression went to astonished, as that *wasn't* the wing of any angel he knew!

Following it back to the back it was attached to, he saw Verity just rise to float off the floor in a brief twirl of self-examination, just as they'd all done when first becoming angels. Sophie, by his side, was now fine, and marveling over this new angel, too.

"Charity and the others started to dissolve," Amy squeaked out the moment she could, motioning toward the rest of the floor with her wand. "Anyone who touched them began to dissolve too."

Indeed, there were now three distinct puddles of gelatinous people parts, slowly spreading as those parts dissolved further. One looked as though it was one person alone, although the state of decay was such he could not tell who. The others were multiples, although even then he had to guess by volume how many people made up the goo.

Nothing appeared to be dissolving any further than it already was, not quickly anyway, although he did note that Amy was hovering above the floor, carefully not touching anything, and that two of their six non-angel guests who'd been invited up had dodged back out the door to his room, and were gazing with some panic of their own back at the scene inside.

Amy gathered her breath, and swung her wand at one of the larger puddles, declaring, "As three are one, now one become three!"

But apparently her guess as to the numbers was off, as that puddle separated into four lumps, three of which immediately began to resolve into people.

"Willow!" Xander started to dart forward, only for rationality to assert itself before he could touch her. Whatever was going wrong, it would not be helped by him dissolving himself again. He could afford to wait until the spell resolved itself, and it did, with three of the four puddle bits swiftly forming back into Willow and two of their guests.

And as Xander watched them resolve, he couldn't believe what his senses were telling him, not until both of those guests who'd been a part of the puddle with Willow began their own 'twirl and spin' floating self-examinations, having both become angels.

It was beautiful, but Xander's gaze had gone back to Verity, who'd only just completed her twirl of self-examination, and beamed toward him with a brilliant smile. Then, just as fast, his eyes went towards Sophie, and expanded in surprise.

He shot up off the floor like a lightning bolt, dragging Sophie into the air with him. "Their stats are the same as ours were, after combining, but before reading the level-up books," he told Amy, indicating Sophie, and the new angel Verity. "Four-four white angel, knight, wizards with the full set of our special abilities - not their own."

A chill passed down his spine as he realized that meant Sophie had lost her angelic special ability to protect his artifacts from being targeted. A quick glance informed him none of the puddles had any discernible abilities, either. That meant his artifacts were subject to attack from worlds away, although that was secondary to getting his friends and compatriots back!

Despite depending on those artifacts to continue fighting and thus living, Xander was still very much of the opinion that the lives of his friends were far more important to him than his.

Amy had more or less ignored his pronouncement, putting that mentally aside to deal with later as she focused all of her power and control on reverting the next pile of dissolved human and angel parts back into real people, using the same incantation as before.

One of these new people being revealed as the magic restored her was apparently someone of great significance to one of those two recruits hanging back in fear outside the door, as that maiden chose to rush in upon seeing her, and tripped over a puddle of person parts she wasn't paying attention to by the door on her way in, giving Xander a chance to see the dissolving action from an outside perspective this time.

It wasn't pretty.

The way the young lady fell was also unfortunate, joining the remaining people-puddles together as her mass fell across them.

Amy merely wiped the sweat from off her brow and continued centering herself, catching her breath before reverting the final puddle, extra member or no.

"What happened? What is going on?" Willow overcame her own confusion from the aftereffects of being goo long enough to ask.

Xander answered grimly. "As near as I can tell, somebody just cast a spell to the effect of 'Verduran Enchantresses cannot exist'. And one with particularly horrific effects, at that."

"But..." Willow sputtered. "They Can't Do That!"

"Not with any Magic card I know of," Amy agreed having just cast the final spell, so the last puddle of people began reforming. "Destroy all Verduran Enchantresses is not a card that would sell very well."

"If it was just a 'destroy all' I could have regenerated them," Xander shook his head, noting in the privacy of his mind that what had been true for Sophie was true for them all. Every one of the former goo people had identical stat blocks - probably as a direct result of the way Amy had restored them.

"But a 'Destroy All' is one of the few, if not the only, effects that will simply bypass both 'Protection From' and 'Can't Be Targeted' defenses - which we have. So someone invoked a unique magical effect, tailor-made to stop us," Amy worried, but she was already continuing on her explanation. "Probably made up on the spot. That actually fits something I've been concerned with. I've been keeping records, and most of the creatures we've seen aren't real cards. Some are close, but the majority are very different. In fact, for some I'd say the similarities are mostly due to being based on similar legends."

"Yeah, so far this 'game' has been going by a very different set of rules." Sophie, who was quite bravely overcoming her own shock, agreed. Collecting herself rapidly, she explained, "Amy and I had been discussing this, and as near as we can tell from reading the Watcher's books we borrowed from Giles, that's because the other players aren't 'players' in a Magic: The Gathering sense, more like powerful groups or individuals who already had loads of supernatural followers and that got identified as 'opponents' when you picked up that deck of cards. They might not even be mages at all, certainly not in the sense you are, anyway."

Willow nodded, having been reading on this topic exhaustively those hours when she could not be with Xander, sorrowfully added her own conclusion. "That's what my research has been bearing out. According to the Watcher's diaries, there have always been a large number of archdevils and demon lords vying for control of this and many other worlds. I think when you picked up that deck you simply entered that competition as a mage styled on Magic, The Gathering - but it is not a Magic-style game. It's just a bunch of tremendously powerful figures fighting each other for control over a number of closely linked dimensions."

Amy summed up. "So, while you have to follow the rules, they don't. Or, rather, they are following their own rules. I imagine everyone with power has some restrictions on it."

"Only we really don't know what those restrictions might me," Sophie observed. "That's a disadvantage right there. Not knowing how they defend themselves, it becomes difficult to attack them, or to block their attacks on us."

"Actually, that's not quite true," Xander observed. "We already know these guys are creature heavy, and light on spells, just from what we've already observed attack us. And those creatures, at least, we mostly know how to deal with."

"Mostly," Sophie agreed, still privately thinking of the many attacks that had gotten through.

"So what really happened?"

Xander gestured to the balcony, and all present, barring the girl who was still hanging fearfully around the door, flew off of it to see their surroundings. Gone was Sunnydale. Instead, all of their libraries and towers and other properties had been moved to an island somewhere. A sanctuary. Great castles of white stone stood tall on the beaches, and Xander could somehow tell this place was just waiting to be empowered as tropical islands.

"Best guess is, someone caught us rewriting reality, felt threatened, then pulled whatever it was he pulled trying to make us stop. It might have been chance he struck at our angelic enchantresses, or it might have been the only link he could hit. I don't imagine demons have much in the way of specialized deck removal. Invoking obscure and special case game rules to destroy decks of playing cards that shouldn't even exist strikes me as a low priority for world-spanning demon lords, generally speaking. But still, somebody felt us acting, then did what they could to stop us from continuing what we were doing."

"Can't afford to let an enemy have that kind of advantage," Sophie agreed.

"That's what most monsters of this level think, I'm certain," he observed.

"Can they stop us?" Willow asked quietly.

Xander closed his eyes in concern. "I don't know. But we do ourselves no favors if we do their jobs for them and don't even try. Thanks to Amy, we recovered mostly from the last hit. We'll just have to go forward boldly, and if we take another, deal with that, too."

He brought up a card and charged it with energy, before handing it off to Harmony without need for further comment. "Archangel, a five-five flying that does not tap to attack."

"Basically Serra, but more powerful and tougher. Less popular, because she was a *lot* more expensive, thus harder to get out," Amy summarized.

Xander landed before the young lady still quivering just outside the door to his bedroom. "Hi there. I believe I have a promise to keep about transforming you into an angel?"

As he accepted the charged cards back from Harmony, Charity darted out the entrance, saying, "I'll go fetch three other girls!"

OoOoO

After his initial draw of five, Xander had drawn three sets of sixteen cards, minus one to pay to activate the ability of his Island Sanctuaries - So they ought to be seeing a lot fewer successful monster attacks during the coming month.

However, he still had a huge number of cards.

"I still have seven enchantments to play. Provided I can get to all of them, that's ten, total, this round. We only got six angels out of the Sigil itself, but between those six and the sixteen each out of the other nine, that's going to leave us with a tidy one hundred and fifty four-four flying angel tokens this round."

"And two thousand, four hundred health, just from that," Willow smiled up at her man.

"So, what needs to be played, in what order, for best effect?" Amy requested, folding her arms below her breasts while leaning against a counter. That she was halfway up the wall while doing it, flying effortlessly in midair only underscored the situation.

Xander nodded her way in acknowledgement of the very serious question. "Well, I've got four new angel cards out of the last couple draws of sixteen. That's not counting Archangel, which has already been played. I should probably play the one called Emeria Angel soon, because she has a special ability of bringing a one-one white bird token with flying into play whenever I play a land. So if I put her out first I'll get max bird tokens out of her."

"How much land have you got?" Amy inquired, still floating in midair, now seating herself crosslegged upon the top of a lampshade.

"Seven. I drew a plains, tropical island, Elfhame Palace, forest, Serra's Sanctum, Library of Leng and School of the Unseen."

Amy blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. "That's not a lot of land for having drawn fifty two cards this turn. I'd worry about you being mana-starved for everything we're going to have to do, except the Serra's Sanctums come in ridiculously handy for us there."

"What do they do?" Hope asked.

"Most land, plains and such, say 'tap for one white'," Willow expounded. "That's standard, one mana of one color per land. Forest gives green, islands blue, etc."

"Serra's Sanctum is a bit of heaven, a beautiful city that floats in mid-air just like she does, and has the ability to 'tap for one white - For Every Enchantment You Control'!" Amy emphasized.

Willow did a quick bit of math. "Which, between the ones played last turn, and the ten more from this one, could give us fifty-seven white mana tapping just one of them. It could be an even sixty if we wanted to play the remaining three Fastbonds."

"I'd advise against that," Amy told her friend. "Frankly, either way, one of these will fill our needs for white mana. And it's still best to hold something back so that he can run the Libraries of Alexandria for more cards next turn."

"True," Willow allowed.

Sophie sighed and shook her head. "I'd advise against playing the tropical island, just to not give anything with islandwalk an opening to attack us, but we are rather starved for blue mana at the moment. And we can't use the 'any color' to cover for it all of the time."

"What about the Elfhame Palace, Library of Leng or School of the Unseen?" Charity inquired politely.

"Elfhame Palace is one of the many follow-up cards to the original dual color lands," Amy expounded to her friends, now folding her arms above her head, and floating sideways. "It gives you two color options, in this case white and green, but has a disadvantage in that it comes into play already tapped. So we can't use it this turn."

"Nevertheless, I expect it will be a fun place to live," Xander quipped.

That gave those girls pause as they thought about it. Living in a palace? That had to have something to recommend it, considering the reputation it held.

"And the Library of Leng?"

"That's probably a card we'll just keep back, as it doesn't do anything we really need done, at present." Amy was now floating upside-down, staring down at the ceiling. "It removes any limit to number of cards in the hand, but our Spellbook already does that. It does let us choose to discard back into the deck itself, rather than the discard pile. But, again, we don't have a real pressing need to do that at present. We might play one, as a precautionary measure, just to have the ability, but the other three can be held back, easy."

She smiled at all of them. "While we could play them for the extra bird tokens we'd get though Emeria Angel, with a hundred and fifty angel tokens already expected this turn, I'm not feeling all that desperate for extra blockers."

"The School of The Unseen?"

"An invisible academy for wizards. Think Hogwarts, only without the copyrighted characters, and hopefully with a competent staff. What we can do with it, however, is tap it for colorless mana, or feed it two mana and tap it to get one back of any color, a conversion system that helps more than you might think, as we're currently swimming in white, but are rather short on green and feeling a bit starved for blue."

Cordelia nodded. "If we play four of each of those six lands, plus one of the Library of Leng, that's going to be a hundred one-one bird tokens with flying." She turned to face Harmony. "Do we have enough of that magic paint to color all of them blue?"

While eyes went round all around her, Harmony nodded her agreement. "Sure. Easy. The cans refill if you feed them a bit of magical energy." Here she smirked, "Although, in the amounts you're talking about, we might need to hit Xander up for a point of mana just to keep our paint cans filled."

Cordelia nodded decisively. "Then that helps out our blocking situation as well, giving us a good answer to all of that Protection From White that keeps attacking us. Birds won't kill many of our attackers, but we need not be overly concerned should we lose them, either."

"Shouldn't we make some green?" Charity asked in concern.

Xander shook his head. "No need," he said, showing off one of the cards he held in his hand currently. "Deranged Hermit. Every time he enters play, each one of him brings four one-one green squirrel tokens into play with him. So between our four hermits, that's sixteen green squirrels. But also, each hermit has the special ability that all squirrels get plus one-plus one while the hermit is in play. So, four hermits grants plus four-plus four, and our little one-one squirrels become five-five creatures. The equal of fully grown dragons. I think we have adequate defenders for green," he told everyone with a grin.

"I'm concerned they don't fly," Willow told him earnestly.

"That shouldn't be as much of a problem." Xander hopped out of his seat, hovered a bit in mid air, than came down brandishing four more cards, each of different types. "I drew four more walls this turn. One of those is Wall of Thunder, which flies. I think if we combine that with our walls already capable of blocking armies and not being damaged, flying creatures no longer present the same degree of threat to us."

"Three types of wall into one creature, I'm sure we can do it," Amy agreed, since the one they'd already relied upon for defense was only two, one more ought to be possible.

"What are the other walls?" Sophie leaned forward to ask.

"Wall of Hope, a zero-three white wall that whenever it gets dealt damage, I get extra life equal to that damage. Wall of Pine Needles, a three-three green wall that regenerates for one green mana. And Wall of Resistance, a zero-three white flier that every time it takes damage, gets a plus zero-plus one counter."

"I think we should combine those three into one also," Sophie told everyone eagerly. "Think about it. A three-three wall with flying isn't bad, only it isn't great either until you add in the 'get extra life' and 'get tougher' abilities. Our Fortified Area enchantments give all of our walls Banding, a special ability that lets us choose how damage gets distributed among them. So pair up our Life Giving Walls with our Stop Army Walls. Our enemies still get stopped cold, but we can feed the Life Giving ones just as much damage as they could survive during each attack. That grants you a trickle of extra life, but also makes those walls tougher so they could survive more damage the next time we get attacked, which in turn grants you even more life because each time they get hit, they can handle more the next time."

"But why the extra wall?" Hope asked. "What does the pine needles one add? Doesn't he already have the ability to regenerate his creatures?"

"For two mana, which is harder to scare up in an emergency than one," Amy answered for her. "And don't forget we ran out of mana to do it last turn, which is why our treefolk are dead, and not standing guard outside. Plus, regeneration requires green, which is not our best supply. Also, think on this, last time we got pounded into the ropes we had to send out our treefolk to die in order to save Xander's life. Now, if it came down to that level, where he was so hurting that we were desperate and looking to regenerate creatures, during one of those attacks we *could* stop, have our Stop Army Walls pour all of that damage the blocked creatures would normally do into one of our Life Giving Walls. Suddenly Xander gains in life what would have been a whole assault's worth of damage! Then we regenerate that wall!"

She sighed, yet smiled happily, tossing her hair. "We couldn't do it every turn. Being regenerated from damage that would destroy you is exhausting, and leaves you tapped. And tapped creatures can't do any more blocking. So, long term, we'd get more life per wall by letting them build up capacity just taking what they could sustain with each attack. But in an emergency, we could convert however many attacking creatures' power we like directly into life for Xander."

"Suddenly, I'm no longer so scared about living until my next turn," Xander told everyone honestly. Pivoting in place, he turned to face his lifelong friend.

"Willow, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she dimpled softly, then consumed him in an enormous hug.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

D'Hoffryn is decent proof there are demon lords out there who can simply rewrite reality to suit them, which was the rationale behind zapping the Verduran Enchantresses.

Also, I am aware that Serra's Sanctum is a Legendary Land, and you can only have one of each Legend in play at any one time. So they could only have one of those Sanctums, and yet talked like they planned for several. I was going to address that, but ran out of room.

And, as tough as those new defenses sound, the twenty-seven opposing players each gave him what effectively amounts to a finger flick last turn, expecting it to suffice. Now they know better.

I have more defenses yet to give him, yet they still won't hardly be enough. That's what you ought to expect when mere mortals tangle in the affairs of the Powers That Be.


	7. Chapter 7

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Seven

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

All of their friends cheered for Willow and Xander's new engagement. It was the way angels were, as happy for the success of others as they were for their own.

Besides, there was no worry Xander wouldn't meet his obligations to them. That was part of their nature too, after all. If he was needed for something, and it was even partially his responsibility, he would see to it.

That's just the way he was now.

OoOoO

Leaves parted on the green canopy above the Sunnydale Zoo to admit the presence of Xander and other descending angels. Stepping around the side of a closed concessions booth, the grinning youth came into view of the great cats exhibit.

Four brightly glowing cards emerged from a dragon leather wallet specifically crafted to limit the light (as they hadn't captured ALL of the dragons, having slain two. And they'd played enough role playing games among them to know how useful dragon parts were, so had kept the bodies of the two ones they'd slain).

The cards were gone almost as soon as they'd been retrieved out of the wallet, helping to keep this little 'outside of business hours' visit concealable. Although Harmony smirked at the effort, as the newly empowered Savannah Lions simply muscled up to the bars of their cage, bent them apart with their noses, and bounded free.

The same with the Grizzly Bears, and an antelope enclosure got devastated by their occupants being empowered as Stampeding Wildebeests. The reptile house actually burst apart at the seems as a couple of pythons and anacondas swiftly enlarged into Sea Serpents each as large as a decent sized commuter train.

Concrete, buildings and inconvenient walls simply parted and splintered as those massive creatures slithered off into the ocean. Then the whole thing got repeated again as a couple of other snakes, slipping out of the cracks of the now-ruined reptile house, scattered yellow bricks aside as they became Crawl Wurms, land dwelling cousins of the sea serpent, and slithered out through town, smashing apart vampire housing and scattering the stunned and terrified assassins of both the Watcher's Council and other parties as they went.

~No,~ Harmony giggled into her sleeve. ~Nobody is going to miss this visit.~

Last stop of their little zoo trip was when Xander skipped up the artfully curved walkway up to the rare bird exhibit, lions and bears and wildebeests stamping over around and through the lush greenery of the zoo's landscaping as they followed behind him, angels making a light accompaniment as they giggled, flitting along overhead.

The rare bird exhibit swiftly got empowered as Birds of Paradise, colorful swarms of them in bright plumage counting as one-one green creatures with flying - and the real reason everyone wanted them was the bird of paradise swarms could each be tapped for one mana of any color, just like his mox diamonds.

After that, they left the ravaged park behind, burst pipes fountaining jets of water into the air, fences torn apart, and buildings shattered, all having been crushed by the passage of giant crawl wurms and sea serpents, muscled apart by super powered lions and bears, and just generally trampled under feet by wildebeests while gorgeous birds and angels flitted about overhead.

It was the sort of scene that called out for some elephants and rhinos, really. Add that, and it could almost be mistaken for a scene out of the movie Jumanji.

Luckily, like so much else in town, the Sunnydale Zoo was personal property of the major. So since he was one of the opposition parties, any damage they did to his things was fine. War could pretty much be assumed when the other player sent attacks to kill you, after all.

After the zoo, the angels left those animals behind, banking through low hanging clouds to make a quick stop at one of the farms outside of town. There they stopped in long enough to play for four roosters (the farmer was already up feeding his animals at this hour), which they then quickly transformed into Cockatrices, which could petrify with a touch.

Then they rejoined the animals and quickly teleported this menagerie home.

OoOoO

Blue creatures had a preponderance of merfolk. Now, understandable, but very few girls wanted to commit to a life beneath the waves, when in doing so they would be losing out on access to malls and, most particularly, shopping for shoes.

There just aren't all that many great restaurants underwater, to say nothing about television or the electronics they'd have to give up. So, no volunteers to make like a tuna with the lower half of her. Perfectly understandable.

Instead, they took it from the opposite direction. Rather than transforming a woman into part fish, they transformed something already swimming into a part-girl. And this was done rather handily when, flying back to their island home, they came across a fishing trawler that had just caught a large number of tuna - along with a few dolphins in the mix.

One sea captain slapped in the face with wads of cash later, and they had a whole cargo of tons of tuna now squirming back into the water as merfolk.

The crew of that fishing ship, having watched this, then promptly got drunk. Very drunk.

OoOoO

"Wow! When you said palace, I never imagined this!" Cordelia said on completing their tour. They were all a little on the edge of sensory overload.

"I know what you mean!" Verity agreed, still struck with wonder.

All modern building styles, for a variety of reasons, tend to emphasize straight lines. There are a number of advantages to doing things that way. For one thing building materials are easier to ship, or mass produce in the first place. There are a number of standardized parts and features like elevators and wheelchair ramps that are helped out greatly by everything being all straight and level, to say nothing of how it simplifies construction, making things much easier on the contractors having everything at right angles.

But it did have a tendency in a number of cases of leading to a depressing sameness, where it led to a rigid, mass-produced and corporate feeling.

Elves apparently had a differing view on building design that did not emphasize efficiency of construction or straight lines. If anything, they were the reverse! There were walls that looked like cascading sea foam, and not just because they were painted that way. Half the palace looked like it was outdoors, even while indoors, and it would be extremely difficult to say just how many stories tall each one was, because this whole concept of straight lines, level floors, and strictly defined stories seemed to have been entirely optional to the elves.

There were corridors that had brooks meandering down them, cascading into waterfalls off of balconies. In the great assembly halls, or other rooms where columns or pillars were called for, those got mostly sculpted as individual trees, with their own character to bark, roots and branches. And Charity was among not a few who'd whistled in appreciation, coming into her first leaf-lined hall.

Hope summed it up when she described those elfhame palaces as "Everything you want when you go to a park, or camping, but the real experience never provides."

Nor were those palaces just the outdoors brought indoors. There was a ridiculous quantity of gold and jewels incorporated into the design, emphasizing a little detail here, forming a mosaic there, or just generally involved in 'take your breath away' extravaganzas where you walk into a hall or ballroom and positively everything glitters in a thousand reflected lights.

If modern building styles were plain vanilla, then each of these palaces were thirty-one different flavors, each one of them a refreshing change from the last.

"We're going to live here," Willow declared firmly, on reaching the royal chambers and finding it just the right combination of soft and fluffy pillows scattered about, the necessary furniture for living, and the air of both a library and well-manicured garden.

"Which here?" Xander smiled indulgently, enjoying the awe of his betrothed. "You've said that about the last three palaces as well."

Willow's face scrunched up in concentration as she decided. "Well, there are four of them. How about we call them the Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall Palaces, and divide up the year living three months in each one?"

"That's fine," Xander gave her a hug, choosing not to mention that the spells they'd played this round had created an entirely new island chain, and they were only a couple hundred miles south of Hawaii, so he expected their seasons would not be so drastic as, say, Great Britain, where there were actually good reasons to move south for the winter.

His plains and other land had somehow come along for the ride when he'd first played the tropical island cards, and now they had a main island about the size of New Zealand. And wasn't THAT a big surprise!

"What now?" Charity asked as they left off further exploration of those extensive palaces for later.

Amy checked her notebook. "Well, we are running short on mana, so now would be a good time to play a Serra's Sanctum. Unfortunately, we can only have one."

"Why?" Harmony asked, genuinely puzzled as she collected the card from Xander.

Amy sighed. "Because, unlike most of our cards, that one is officially a Legend, and you can only have one of each type of legend out at one time."

"Oh." Harmony thought about it for a moment, then made her copies and took out her magic label maker and simply affixed a blank strip of tape over the word 'legend', wiping it off of one card.

Seeing that made Amy's hair stand up straight.

"Can you do that?" Sophie probed, dubious.

Harmony shrugged casually. "Well, the worst that can happen is that we can no longer use that card. No big loss. We have four of them, and in that case could only use one, anyway."

She gave a sexy bounce, twirling to a seat in mid-air. "Next worst thing that could happen is that it simply does nothing. We'll find that out when we play a second one. What happens when you play two of the same legends?"

"They both go to the discard pile," Sophie told her, while Amy was still working over her fits, muttering something along the lines of 'can't do that'.

"Ok," Harmony bounced. "So, in that case, we play two and lose both. But we still have one to play, and one to hold in reserve. I don't see anything wrong with that, and believe it's worth the gamble. What have we got to lose?"

Sophie carefully considered that. "Not much, really. Certainly nothing in comparison to what we could gain if this does work out right," she concluded after some deliberation.

Harmony handed over the altered card to Xander, who played it. One rush of near hurricane force wind later, and they had a section of quasi-divine city floating peacefully overhead on its own separate bit of gravity-defying island.

"So the card still worked, and the worst case didn't happen," Harmony observed boldly, then cocked her head curiously to the rest of them, displaying a positively impish grin. "Care to try for another one?"

The experiment got repeated, to no bad results. Soon they had two of the legendary floating city fragments drifting casually overhead in slow orbits of their island properties down below. On analysis, Xander decided there was no conflict between them at all, and the new flying properties were just as permanent and stable as the rest of their magically created belongings. Shortly after he'd decided that, they had four of the flying island cities.

"Well, that worked out fine," Harmony declared, hands posed proudly on her cute hips.

Amy even swallowed her consternation to congratulate her on a fine idea.

OoOoO

"Now that we've got the mana problem solved, what next?" Sophie bubbled.

"Well, it is all white..." Amy's objections cut off as she saw Harmony entering the room, cans of blue and green paint rattling as she shook them. "Nevermind."

Cordelia had just finished reading a second copy of the Book of Exalted Deeds, refreshing the abilities being goo, however briefly, had once stripped away, and as it turned to dust and vanished away on a nonexistent breeze, handed the glasses off to Willow, who'd been waiting with her own copy of the printed book.

Suddenly, there came a crash from downstairs. They'd returned to their original Library of Alexandria to converse, so downstairs was where their guests were. So used to attacks the angels were down there in moments fully prepared to fight to the death.

Instead, what they found was Larry the obnoxious football player embedded in the buffet table, having splattered food everywhere with his impact. Poor Bianca, who'd cooked all that food, was wringing her hands nearby in distress. A large part of what was odd about this was that none of them had ever invited Larry.

The question of how he'd gotten there, at least so far as bathing in their food, was explained when they noticed two things. One, Larry was drunk...

And two, Buffy Summers was standing over him, the tiny girl trying to loom menacingly over him. The looming wasn't working so well due to the difference in size, but the menace was present for all to see. Girl had super strength and wasn't afraid to use it to make a point.

Subtle, thy name is NOT Buffy. Even on a Hellmouth, with Sunnydale Denial Syndrome working fully in her favor, ordinary sheeple had worked out that you do NOT mess with miss Summers.

Casual displays like tossing around football players might have had something to do with it.

"What are you doing here?" Cordelia inquired mildly of Larry as she walked up casually.

The drunk footballer sat up in the scrambled eggs, wiping syrup from his face. "My buddies and I were out drinking when we saw all the cool chicks driving here, and figured we'd crash the party."

Cody nodded. A simple explanation, and probably a true one. She noted his four equally drunk buddies, stunned by the violence so not, at the moment, acting disruptive. Then she turned to Buffy and repeated her mild question. "What are you doing here?"

"But out, Cordelia, this is my fight," came the angry reply.

"This is my home. You will answer my questions," Cordy told her bluntly.

In the background, Willow winced. It was classic Buffy to order other people around, but in certain cases it was an error, if not a sin, to just automatically assert your authority. Especially in cases, like now, when she had none.

Joyce quickly interceded on behalf of her daughter, coming up behind to grasp her by the shoulders and answer in her stead, "I'm sorry. I was with Dawn, chaperoning her at a junior version of the swim team sleepover, when we got told the party was relocating here. On the way I found Buffy wandering the streets, and couldn't simply leave her out there!"

Cordelia nodded. A fair and rational explanation, and she accepted it as such. No sane mother wanted her teenage daughter out walking the streets until dawn. If one knew about the supernatural, the very thought of her being out there in that danger would be horrifying; and if one didn't, they might believe streetwalking was how their daughter earned spending cash, which was arguably worse.

A big step up from dating the undead, though.

Cordy did not even smirk as the presence of Buffy's mother forced Buffy to back down. If not for her, however, she could so easily see the frustrated Slayer going from giving out orders, to threats of physical force.

The problem with Buffy was the world did not exist to orbit her. Her own, personal angst did not drive the universe. And if there was a place it did, Cordy did not want to live there. "Well," she said mildly, "This is a library, not a hotel. However we do have some rooms with the odd couch or two. I'll take Larry and his friends to one to sleep it off. Would you like one too?"

"I just want to go home," Buffy said rather petulantly, averting her eyes and folding her arms.

Cordelia, who was completely unruffled by this childish display. Instead, she was helping Larry off the table and to his feet. However, to the football player's drunken logic this was a perfect opportunity to steal a kiss, and made a drunken lunge to do so, which she dodged adroitly and without any seeming effort, slipping under his arm and around behind him.

Seeing the most popular girl in school was no longer in his sights, Larry saw Buffy before him and decided that she could do in a pinch, only to get decked for his trouble.

Larry fell to the floor, knocked out cold.

Buffy was now glaring at Cordelia. "Who are you? Cordelia never knew how to fight."

A circle of descending angels suddenly surrounded Buffy, swords out, and laid on her neck in a perfect ring of sharp steel encircling her jugular. All of them were wings out, and halos on.

And every one of them was a face she knew from school.

"Please," Willow pled to Buffy, "Don't force us to hurt you."

Cordelia nonchalantly pointed east. "Well, if you still want to go home, it is about a thousand miles that way. I do hope you can swim. If you start now, it should only take you about a month to get back there. Unfortunately, we have no boats to offer you. But perhaps you can use a tree branch as a flotation device."

"What's going on?" Joyce asked desperately, clutching Dawn to her bosom and staring left and right at these people who held her eldest at sword point, all deadly serious.

"I can answer that," Xander descended from on high, his own wings making an arch behind him, white garments softly glowing as he landed behind the ring of angels that held Buffy captive.

"YOU!" The Slayer accused, her eyes narrowing at him. "So I guess that medical excuse was a lie all along. What possessed you this time?"

The young man simply ignored her, turning to Joyce he apologized, "I am sorry about this incident. But your daughter is a magically empowered human with special abilities called a Vampire Slayer, and she works for a Watcher's Council, that has ordered my death."

Xander looked at Buffy directly, then spread his arms. "I am the sorcerer your organization has hunted this past month. You have been ordered to kill me. Will you do it?"

Seeing that not even Willow's sword wavered so much as a perceptible fraction of an inch, and a tentative shove trying to poke one away showed there was at least as much super-strength on the other end of those swords as she had, Buffy surrendered, raising her hands.

Cordelia smugly ordered, "Take her away, and strip her."

The looks on both Joyce and Buffy's faces were horrified.

Cordelia calmly explained to the mother, "This is a library, not a prison. We don't have any holding cells or cages or anything like that. We do have locks, but none that she couldn't simply smash through. So our only option is for her not to want to escape. Since I doubt she wants to go streaking in front of everybody, we'll put her in a closet, and she'll pass out her clothes, and consider that good enough."

She looked at Joyce directly. "For a potential assassin, this method of incarceration is the most mild we have, considering our limited resources and her own supernatural strength."

Cordelia, smiling, then met Buffy's eyes. "I think we should put you in the closet of the room where Larry and the drunks will be sleeping. Unless you want to give them an eyeful, you 'll stay inside. As you are stronger than all of them, there is no doubt in your ability to hold that door shut, should they try to enter. Consider them guard dogs."

Willow and Amy assumed the duty, the latter getting the Slayer in an arm lock from behind before they simply marched her away. Minor struggles proved to Buffy that her captors were at least as strong as she was, and in Amy's case stronger.

Both returned in moments, and while Amy was giving to Buffy's mother the bag holding all of her daughter's clothes, every stitch down her to shoes and socks, with underwear on top, Willow instead approached Xander and presented him with a slip torn from the magic pad of receipts.

"What's this?" He read it and cocked an eyebrow at her.

She explained. "The problem we have with Buffy is that, effectively, she is an enemy creature. Well, also that she has what the Watcher archives refer to as the Heart of Demon giving her all her powers. But you didn't draw a Disenchant to get rid of that, so this is the best we can do."

"What is it?" Harmony peeked over from his side to see.

Xander raised the slip of magic paper. "A receipt, that in exchange for not putting her in the closet of a room full of drunken jocks, Buffy agrees not to try and escape for the next twenty four hours. Or, failing that, she agrees to belong to me, body and soul."

"While she is an enemy creature, we can't trust her. But she is a friend, and this," Willow explained excitedly, pointing to the slip of paper, "Should put her back on our side."

"She'll try to break out in the next fifteen minutes, tops," Amy estimated.

"Where did you put her?" Xander asked.

"Closet of your room." Willow bounced in joy. "We had to take all of your clothes and things out, so she wouldn't just put them on. She's in there right now with a stool and a bucket and a jug of water, just like in the prison movies."

"It's ominous," Amy agreed.

"How will we know when she tries to escape?" Charity asked.

Willow held up a cell phone. "I've wired the door with an alarm, and the room for video so I can see if she's just peeking or actually trying to slip out. We'll know."

She then treated everyone to a brilliant smile. "She breaks out, she becomes *our* Slayer! And I'm sure you can trust your own creatures. Maybe, once she is ours, we can even use paint to deal with her black part!"

An experiment during the past month had revealed that magic paint didn't have any effect worth noting on things that Xander didn't have magical control of. His style of magic being closely tied to colors probably had something to do with that. But, like so much else, it didn't come with an instruction manual, so they had to guess.

Still, what Willow offered was as good a plan as any that had been presented for dealing with the Slayer. Xander gave her a smile and a nod, accepting it.

Joyce had been forced to seek a seat on a nearby sofa, holding her pounding heart. It could not have been easy to find that your daughter was effectively a professional killer, and one of her own best friends was the current target!

Hope and Charity sat with the mother on either side and began to soothe and comfort her.

Verity and her friends were working the crowds, doing much the same with them.

OoOoO

Amy had overestimated Buffy's patience by about five minutes. It was ten minutes, almost to the dot, when the Slayer tried to escape.

When poking her head out revealed no guards, she darted across the room to where Xander's clothes had been laid after being removed from the closet. Seizing hold on a pair of jeans, she bent to slip them on, when...

"Wow, Buffy. If you really wanted into my pants, all you had to do was ask. Previous to my engagement, of course."

The Slayer whirled around, clutching the pants to best cover her as yet unclad body, and discovered she was in a room filled with angels, who'd snuck in to surround her far stealthier than she ever could.

Xander's face was amused, being oddly chivalrous as he looked nowhere but her eyes as he held forth the receipt. "You were told to leave that closet or try to clothe yourself would be treated as an escape attempt, and here you are doing both. I call your debt due."

The pants in Buffy's hands turned half white, half black.

Xander turned his back on her. Touching Willow on the shoulder, he said, "I leave you to handle this," and left, the ivory door swinging noiselessly closed behind him.

Willow took hold of a can of white paint and began shaking it.

Xander was a little surprised that Harmony had followed him out. Instead of asking her, however, she took him by the arm and led him off to an adjoining room. "Come on," she told him, whipping open the street vendor's coat to reveal a projector, which she quickly paid for, then set up on a table. "When we turned to goo we reset, losing everything significant to our game statistics but the qualities the cards gave us. We still have the powers of several cards combined, but we lost the advantages we got from reading those level up books, and have to do them over again."

"So why the projector?" He cocked his head as she placed it on a table and began to fiddle with the settings.

Bend over the ancient piece of furniture while fine tuning a piece of modern technology, her somewhat distracted answer floated back, "Because if we are to get everyone up to speed they all have to do this, but we all need the reading glasses to get it done, and since we are expecting a hundred and fifty angels just out of the tokens from that one enchantment card, there is simply no time to get everybody ten minutes alone with those glasses. Not if we are going to attack someone today."

She finished what she was doing and stood, pulling the enchanted glasses from a pocket as she spoke to the brown haired youth. "The most important quality an angel gets out of reading this Book of Exalted Deeds is not tapping to attack, if she didn't already have it. Your angel tokens don't already have it. They can fly, but not this. Our experience from last round says we need them for blockers. So, since they cannot both block and attack without that power, we need them all to read this book."

Xander cocked his head at her curiously. "Our only enemy we know of it the Sunnydale Mayor, and I think a few dozen angels should be fine for taking on that job."

She gave him an indulgent huff. "My advice? Don't go with what *should* work. We've been surviving attacks for weeks that should have killed us. Go all out. Throw everything you can at him without compromising your defenses. We only know of one target to hit, so it's not like there is a reason to split our attack forces, or not use what we have."

He considered that and nodded, conceding that she had a real point with it.

She turned away from him to bend over the table once more, using a slight bit of magic to affix the reading glasses over the projector lens, so the beam was cast out through them. Then she put a copy of the Book of Exalted Deeds in his hands, took one for herself, and finally one inside the projector.

Then, her copy of the book still held firmly in her lap, she took a seat, guided him to one with a glance, then looked up at the ivory wall where the image of the book was displayed by the projector, and reached over to the device to open the cover of the copy projected.

"If I am right, then reading the copy on the screen will go quickly, because we are technically doing it through those enchanted reading glasses, and the books in our laps we are holding because the cost to gaining the advantages comes in the form of the book disintegrating. So we each have our own copy to disintegrate, as well as the one to read. Let's see if this works, ok?"

Deciding he could spare ten minutes, as it would take them at least that long to tame Buffy to whatever scheme Willow had cooked up, Xander settled in to read.

A small army of several dozen angel tokens settled in behind them, each with their own copies, as one of their number had been tasked with printing extra of those books since they'd first been created that morning, in anticipation of the hundred and fifty of them expected to be in place by tonight.

OoOoO

Buffy Summers had begun feeling a whole lot better about herself since they had painted the black half of those jeans white, and no, she could not explain that at all. Ten minutes ago, she would have thought dressing in all white to be a fashion disaster to be avoided at all costs, yet they somehow pulled it off, and now she felt drawn that way herself.

"Okay, black taint taken care of!" Willow declared triumphantly, setting down her paint can with every evidence of extreme satisfaction.

The rest of Xander's clothes had already been returned to his closet by the other angels.

Amy was sizing Buffy up, considering her, yet her comment was directed to Willow, "We've never combined a creature of our type of magic with one of another style before, and I don't feel comfortable leaving her The Slayer in any case, for fear the Watchers have some hooks in her we don't know of to keep or restore control."

Cordelia nodded from where she was in the air above the Slayer, sword drawn, in guard position in case anything funny should happen. "But Xander didn't draw a Disenchant. How do you plan to remove her Slayer-ness?"

Hope and Charity, along with Verity and some others, were still downstairs comforting Buffy's mother and otherwise keeping tabs on the crowd.

Willow treated them all to an impish grin before going to the boxes of things recovered from the costume shop, and after a moment of searching her hands emerged with a princess dress.

"It's very simple," the redhead explained. "We know of only one thing that has removed her Slayer powers before, and fortunately, we just happen to have a copy."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

So Buffy rejoins the gang.

And no, I really couldn't think of anything less complicated or benign to bring her into the group. What with their ability to detect magic, and her working for an enemy organization, those were pretty tough obstacles to overcome in a way they could rely on.

This is a group who deal with absolutes, so certainty is very important to them. And due to Buffy's laid back attitude of "sure, whatever" it would not have been enough for her to just say "sure, I'll join you," when she could just as easily change her mind the next moment.

And we know the enemy would have done things like kidnap her mom to force her to switch sides again. So, knowing what was at stake, not only their own lives but the fate of this and hundreds of other worlds, Xander and his side could not accept her into theirs knowing that.

So we got something they could feel certain of.

Also, I must confess, it has been truly pointed out to me that Library of Leng is an artifact that costs one, not a land. However, this is already a very fussy story, so I don't want to go back and recalculate everything (and you'd be surprised at how much math is involved in keeping this story straight). So, while I acknowledge the fault, we will go forward as though they got hold of a misprinted card, and treat it as a land, not an artifact.

It shouldn't make that much difference in the story, but there would be a lot more back-end work to fix it than it is really worth.


	8. Chapter 8

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Eight

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

"My Lord," Willow twinkled merrily, entering the room at the head of an entourage of angels, plus Buffy in a dress. "May I present to you the Lady Elizabeth Anne Summers?"

The Lady Summers dropped into a perfect curtsy.

Xander rose, the Book of Exalted Deeds had already disintegrated to dust in his hands (he would have to thank Harmony, as she'd had a brilliant idea on this, and though it had also caused the projector, and the book on it to short out, they could always buy new projectors and print more books), but he was very much reassured to be a five-five creature again.

He was also a trifle surprised to see they'd gotten her into that dress. He'd overheard some of the discussions in the next room, where Buffy had refused to wear the corset, and half of the petticoats. She'd also taken objection to certain other parts of the attire.

In the end they wound up recovering the original princess costume out of the Summer's attic in Sunnydale, where the torn garment had been placed after it got returned to her mother by the hospital staff when she'd been admitted, and threatened to stuff her into THAT instead, at which point the Slayer's objections had crumbled, having been objecting to the new dress mostly out of bad memories of the first.

Faced with the actuality of the first, she'd scrambled into the second.

Of course, they'd added to it, as the primary problem the last time was the lady she had ended up as was a little too old fashioned. So they'd made a stop by a regular costume shop and picked up a bit of tawdy plastic jewelry meant for four year old girls, and that was based on a set worn by the Princess Diana.

Now that tawdy plastic jewelry was very real, and it was quite a modern princess who was curtsying before him.

"Rise, Lady Elizabeth," Xander instructed, raising a card. "As Slayer you were protector of mankind. Now you shall continue those duties in another form. More vampires, monsters and creatures of darkness die attacking me nightly than you used to kill in a month. You shall see to it that continues for a good, long time, as my Veteran Bodyguard!"

He charged the card (handed it off to be copied) then brought it down.

OoOoO

As a young girl in Boston was working out on the set of exercise equipment in the gym her current guardian had set up in the basement, performing a little, late night practice before going to bed, the little, leather ball she'd been smacking around on that boxing thingy suddenly exploded from her latest hit.

"What happened?" Faith stared at the destroyed leather ball leaking sawdust.

"Oh, I think you know," her gentle guardian prompted. "Congratulations, Slayer."

"You mean all that stuff you were telling me about slayers and vampires was REAL?" the young girl protested.

By way of answer, the gentle woman simply gestured to the barbell set Faith had been grunting and straining against earlier. The girl went to it a little dubiously. A minute later, when the set she could barely lift a few minutes ago was being tossed around and juggled in one hand, the girl was convinced.

Leaving her young charge dealing with her suddenly inherited Slayer powers, the Watcher quietly excused herself to make some calls.

They would be quickly assigned to Sunnydale.

OoOoO

"What happened?"

"I don't KNOW! We've never combined our kind of magic with someone enchanted by any other before, and that includes magic costumes!"

The rest of Buffy's princess costume, along with the former one, had risen on their own, along with the outfit of clothes Buffy had been wearing when she got there, and stood as silent sentinels by either side of her crackling with magic, little bolts of what appeared to be blue lightning arcing between her and them continually.

Buffy still had not risen from where she now lay on the floor. Her dress was now far more practical, although clearly still fancy it was suited to more modern balls, and concealing the ample weaponry she now carried, including a shoulder holstered pistol.

But she wasn't moving, except to breathe.

Harmony whispered in Xander's ear, and he looked. Yes, it looked like there *were* little, electrical, after-images of it looked like a ghostly Buffy inhabiting the other three costumes.

"What can it hurt to try?" Harmony asked, over the crackle. "You know when you tried it on those mannequins that first day all it did was not let you."

Silently agreeing that was the case, Xander shrugged and brought up the second Veteran Bodyguard card, directing it toward the set of floating corset and petticoats that Buffy had refused to wear out of her current costume, and that was, between lightning bolts, inhabited by an after-image of her.

The card activated and a second flesh and blood Buffy crumpled to the floor where the floating corset and petticoats had once been, dressed in a modest costume similar to the first. The lightning storm also seemed to die out by about a third.

Xander met Harmony's eyes.

Two more cards came down, each time creating a new Buffy out of a formerly empty set of clothes, and finally the lightning storm ceased.

The moment it stopped, all four Buffies began to stir.

OoOoO

"Huh! What?" Giles startled awake in his bed, brought aware by a gentle hand on his shoulder. A glance to the side at the glowing numerals of his clock revealed it was early in the morning, far too early to be awake as he'd only gone to sleep a few, short hours ago.

"I just thought you'd like to know," a voice whispered out of the darkness, a voice Giles recognized as belonging to one of the more sympathetic of his fellow Watchers. "A new Slayer has been called."

"Something happened to the rookie?" What was that Jamaican Slayer's name again?

"No." the figure shook its head in the darkness. "Apparently miss Summers was lost on patrol last night."

Giles did not return to sleep that night, spending a lonely day with a bottle of whiskey.

OoOoO

"Well," said Willow, forcing some brightness over her confusion. "They all insist they are Lady Elizabeth. So, I hereby dub thee Lady Elizabeth de Summers, Lady Elizabeth de Winter, Lady Elizabeth de Spring, and Lady Elizabeth de Autumn." She pointed to the four Buffy-copies in turn.

Each curtsied as she received her title.

"And I suppose we can give you duties over the four palaces, during peacetime, assuming we ever get a peacetime," she half-grumbled that last part under her breath, then looked up to Xander, "Assuming that pleases my lord?"

"It does," Xander confirmed, nodding gravely, looking over his four bodyguards. At least one aspect of this was turning out alright. Better than anticipated, really. A Veteran Bodyguard was naturally a two-five creature, not amazing on dishing out damage, but able to absorb terrific punishment without harm. Since a Slayer was only a two-two creature before getting plus one-plus one tokens from killing strong vampires, this was obviously pretty good.

Only Buffy didn't lose any of her tokens when she'd permanently stopped being a Slayer, and become a Veteran Bodyguard. So now she was a four-seven creature, before you counted the enchanted castles, which made her a four-fifteen, almost ridiculous, really - A single human who could take on three mature dragons before it would kill her.

Except, the job of a Veteran Bodyguard was to take any damage from unblocked creatures that would normally hit him, so she'd almost certainly use every bit of that toughness and still need more.

Fortunately, thanks to his enchantments, any one of his creatures could be regenerated. So even if a demon stuffed a nuke down his shorts, and she took that damage for him, she'd still be alright.

So it was good, and what she was now left what she'd been as The Slayer in the dust.

Harmony cocked her head at Xander, then asked, "Is a Veteran Bodyguard a knight?"

"No. Unfortunately, it counts as a simple human." Willow answered for him.

Harmony turned upon the gowned blondes and commanded, "Elizabeth Summers, kneel!"

Understanding dawning, the four stunned former Slayers did so.

"I hereby knight thee, Dame Elizabeth de Summers." Harmony announced, tapping the first Buffy on both shoulders with her sword.

There came a flash of light as her status changed.

"Rise, and greet thy Lord Alexander."

As Elizabeth rose to her feet and flung herself into a hug on Xander, Amy's cat whispered to those nearby, "It makes sense. The only requirement to being a soldier is to be drafted to serve as one, and the only difference between being a soldier and a knight is having been elevated to the right social position. And unless the king declares otherwise, knights have always been able to create other knights."

"That was very nice of Harmony," Willow glowed with joy for her friends. As she watched, Harmony had moved on to knight the next Buffy in line, then the next, and so on.

OoOoO

Spellcasting after that came hot and fast.

The enchantment Privileged Position meant everything he had but Player Xander himself couldn't be targeted by his enemies, thus replacing the special ability of his lost Indomitable Angels with something even better. Land Tax got played, which gave him three more land a turn so long as any enemy controlled more territory than him. Concordant Crossroads and Circle of Protection: Green all got laid down without much trouble.

About the only problem they had was the Circle of Protection: Green, which could protect against green sources of damage in exchange for mana, they were hoping to use magic paint on to make the four circles each protect against a different color, most particularly Black - only it didn't work that way.

It was a classical magic circle drawn in runes, and the runes didn't much care what color they were, they were letters of a forgotten alphabet that still only said the same thing, and what those said defined how that circle worked.

So green was all it could protect him from, and so far, to their knowledge, they had no green opponents. But with that one circle in there, that indicated circles for the other colors were probably in that deck somewhere.

Still, despite that disappointment, things went along pretty smoothly.

They already had one Spellbook in play from earlier that round, and Harmony had proved they could make as many copies as they wanted on her machine, so they literally had no reason to play any more of, so could afford to keep three back to pad his hand.

Moss Diamond gave green mana, and was one of those things meant to replace the mox jewels, only it wasn't nearly as good any way you measured it. He played it mostly so his girls would have a fist-sized diamond to be all sparkly and look pretty for them.

Living Artifact allowed him to regain any life he lost, a rate of one point per turn, or in other words almost certainly too slow to do him any good. But it was an enchantment, so playing it got him some extra angel tokens. He enchanted the moss diamonds for the heck of it.

Sophie snorted when she got a look at his next card. "Acorn Catapults are kind of like the Prodigal Sorcerer, in that it can tap to do a point of damage to anyone, anywhere. The only problem is, they have a drawback, in that whoever you shoot, the player in control of the target shot gets a one-one squirrel token on his side to serve him. So you could just be adding recruits to an enemy player's army."

Xander grinned and played all four catapults, then immediately used them to shoot his own walls - the ones that got tougher every time they got damaged, and that gave him life while doing so. So he got extra life, tougher walls, and four extra squirrels doing it.

Then they got back to creatures.

"There are Jolly Green Giants in that deck?" Charity asked, staring up in wonder as four of their male guests transformed into... well, yes, they did bear a resemblance to a certain character that was used to sell canned vegetables.

Amy snorted in laughter. "Uhm, no." She blushed, trying to ignore the resemblance. "They are called Gaea's Liege, and mostly they have one power and one toughness for every forest you control. It's different on the attack, then he has power and toughness equal to the forests the defending player controls. But either way, he can be insanely tough."

"So, how many of those have we got?" Charity asked innocently.

"Well, first round, for mana, we drew a forest and two plains, not counting the island we had to discard to pay for mox diamond. Then we got another forest this round, and that tropical island also counts. So, three lands that count as forests, then four copies of each, so on defense, he is a twelve-twelve right now, but in later rounds should only get tougher." Amy instructed.

Willow's smirk was almost feral, as that was HER man these giants would be defending! "Better still, he has the special ability of 'tap to turn target land into a forest', so he can get real big, real quick." she explained.

"Who are going to be the Deranged Hermits?" Cordelia asked, with some distaste. That was an emotion they all shared, as there was no part of that title they liked.

"I was thinking Larry and his drunk buddies, actually," Xander confessed with a grin.

A grin they all soon shared.

"Totally! Far Out!" Larry awoke wearing a tie-die shirt, bell-bottomed pants, and a kerchief over hair that was almost as long as he was tall. "Squirrels, man!" he declared with ludicrous intensity. "It's all about the squirrels, dude!"

"Yeah! We totally dig it!" three of his four drunken buddies, now similarly attired, exclaimed.

"Ok, Deranged Hermits now taken care of," Xander exclaimed as they left the room with the drunks, that was now rapidly filling with squirrels running in from outdoors. "What next?"

Sophie was reading off a list in her hands. "Well, we've got a Throne of Empires left to play. After that things get a little more complicated."

SMASH!

They all looked over to where Harmony had just reduced to rubble the porcelain throne Xander had been using as his official seat ever since Halloween. "What?" she challenged. "We all know what Xander was going to use to enchant for any card named 'throne'. But we only had one of it, and now he needs four. So, one of those repair spells we have been studying can restore any nonmagical object, so long as there is at least half of it left. So help me shift this rubble a bit. If we can put it into two equal halves, we can restore each into two separate thrones. Then do it again and we'll have four!"

Soon it was so.

"What's he going to do with four places to sit?" Amy whispered aside to Willow.

"Put one of them in each of his four palaces, I suppose," was her answer. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask, what does a Throne of Empires do, anyway? I don't know that card."

"Pay it mana and tap it to create a one-one white soldier token." Amy replied. "It gets better if you have the matching crown and scepter, but it works as-is."

"More defenders is a good thing," Willow agreed. "And I find I am not minding having the tokens around. The tiniest creature can block the mightiest, if you don't mind it dying. And with tokens we don't mind!"

"It works," Amy nodded, looking back to where Xander activated his new thrones ability to put four companies of a hundred troops each into play, that all together only added up to four one-one creatures. Counted as individuals, the soldiers were nonentities. "So long as the enemy you are blocking doesn't have Trample," she muttered under her breath.

"Now on to the complicated stuff," Sophie mourned.

"What's complicated about these?" Amy pointed out four cards.

By way of answer, Sophie just subtly pointed out Harmony with her thumb.

"Oh!" Yes. That was a sufficient answer.

Harmony had been busy setting up an easel, like artists used to hold up canvases to paint on, only what she had hung on hers looked like an oversize dream catcher. "Ok!" the former cheerleader declared brightly, turning to face them all. "We've all been studying the books we copied from the Watcher Archives. But I've also looked into the spellbook left behind by Amy's mom, and her witchcraft had an interesting way to stop a curse from hitting you, by making it get stuck on a proxy instead."

She put a hand on the rim of her oversize dream catcher. "This is that setup. The only real drawbacks are you have to put the whole thing together before a curse is cast on you, and you've got to have something to take that curse for you."

She held up a For Dummies book whose pages had been blanked out by white paint. Placing that at the heart of her dream catcher array, she then stood before Xander and presented herself for a spell. "Okay! Now hit me with one of those creature enchantments!"

OoOoO

The noonday sun glinted down on a cloud of white robes and feathers, and waves sparkled beneath their advance, as an assault force of nearly two hundred angels swept down on the green coast where Sunnydale lay before them.

In the midst of this cloud, in the most protected position, Xander's face was wet with tears of fierce joy, and his chest burned with the emotions within him, as around him his friends and followers, and even family accompanied him on one of the most important days of his life. He had never been more proud to be part of the good guys than on this day. Just being a part of this great force of good creatures was the single best experience of his life.

By his side, Willow winked at him, her tears of joy matching his.

The assault on the Mayor was on.

Harmony's crazy idea had borne fruit... again! Her plan for deflecting curses into an object, deflecting one of his enchantment spells off of her instead of a curse, then using a blanked-out For Dummies book for the object to receive that curse, had, crazily enough, combined the instructional magic of the For Dummies book with his creature enchantment and given them a For Dummies book that provided the benefit of that enchantment to whatever creature read the book.

She'd then immediately proceeded to make hundreds of copies, of course.

So, thanks to her insane brilliance, and willingness to play funky tricks with his cards, the products of Archery Training, Jabari's Banner, Hermetic Study and Nature's Blessing (all four types) had been encoded into their own For Dummies books, to be used by every creature who could read. That cut out creatures like his walls and the squirrels, but included everyone in his current assault force.

That quite literally gave every one of his angels an extra half-dozen special abilities, and now the very least of them were six-six creatures.

Some few were even better than that.

Xander was almost ashamed to be launching an assault force this size against anyone, as it represented so much overkill it got downright silly! However, he took glory in the moment of just being a part of something so grand and glorious as nearly two hundred angels all united on the same mission.

Then the waves below parted and the first of the undead ghost ships rose to the defense.

OoOoO

"It's easy to forget, sometimes, that this guy lived through both World Wars!" Xander yelled aside to Willow, shouting to be heard over the roar of explosions going on all around them.

She was about to reply, but it got lost as she was forced to dodge the flaming wreckage of a Sopwith Camel as it went tumbling past her out of the sky, a grinning skeleton sat at the biplane's controls still wearing the classic flight helmet and jacket, scarf tucked jauntily into the collar as it went crashing to what was probably not its first doom.

The sky surrounding them was black with smoke from the anti-aircraft artillery pounding away at them. On the waves below rode a significant portion of the United States Navy from both world wars, crewed by skeletons wearing tattered rags as they manned the guns.

A Corsair dove at Xander, bullets belching from both wings as the World War Two fighter sought to rend him into his component parts. He dodged upwards and to the side, flashing a bolt of fire into the plane's fuselage. The was no fuel onboard to explode, but he did snap the airplane in half. And as it fell to its doom he thought he saw the markings of the Black Sheep Squadron on its side.

World War One biplanes swirled around them, side by side with all of the major aircraft from World War Two, and even a few after, fighters dogfighting angels while Flying Fortresses circled, their turreted machineguns strafing at clouds of black smoke, probing at any hint of white cloth or feather.

Amy dodged in to slash downwards with her sword, severing the wing of another fighter as it passed by him, and proving that the angels were both far more nimble, and faster, than the fighter aircraft that were attacking them.

A stream of bullets passed by his face as Xander dashed aside to make his own kill on a Mustang, sword passing through the metal wing effortlessly.

Incongruously, while the skeletons at the controls were all decomposing, and the movies had always shown ghost ships and planes in a similar shape, the machines they were manning looked brand new, in straight out of the factory condition. The navy below them was sparkling, ship shape and Bristol fashion, able to pass inspection at that moment.

If you ignored the rotting crewmembers, that is.

Willow drew back a longbow to her ear and let loose a shaft that penetrated deep into a strut holding the wing of a Stratofortress to its body, severing enough of that vital support the stress of its own flying was enough to do the rest, tearing loose the wing and sending the bomber down to crash.

Animated as they were by magic, fuel or engines didn't matter, so wings were the easiest way to score a kill on these ancient aircraft. It was that or cut their entire fuselage in half.

Lightning crashed as angels fought back with swords, arrows and magical energy, darting in to sever a wing here, detonating a fuel tank there, and proving once and for all it was so far a completely one-sided battle.

The angels were winning.

The ancient aircraft had barely even slowed them down.

Glancing down at the fleet of what had to be over a hundred warships, including, if he was not mistaken, the Yorktown, Xander's inner senses told him they could take it, if they wanted to. But sinking a fleet of old warships was not their goal for today, and if they spent their energy destroying that fleet their real target, the Mayor, would get away. So he turned his face back towards town as the last of the old aircraft fell.

The ships no longer had power to block or delay them.

It was only a narrow stretch of water left before they were over the coastland of California.

"He's been busy!" Harmony cried, seeing what now defended the town.

OoOoO

It was mid-morning when Giles came out of a convenience store, a newly purchased bottle in a brown bag held carefully in one hand as he fumbled for the keys to his car, when an unfamiliar spell washed over him.

Drunken as he was, an old instinct left over from his Ripper days caused him to counter its effects on himself, then he watched in amazement as every single person in town simply stopped what they were doing, closing up shop where necessary, and simply headed home to go to sleep.

It was like they had practiced for an air raid drill, or something. Action simply ceased, and they all, every one of them, reported back to their beds. From listening in on a purloined radio, even the Watchers and their squads of assassins just called everything off to trundle off to their motel rooms and tuck themselves in.

This was odd enough he spent an hour driving around watching it.

Then, once the living were safely tucked away, safe in their dreams, the undead appeared.

Giles was near the warehouse district when it happened, and he would never have believed it otherwise. First, the doors to dozens of warehouses that had never before been the center of any kind of vampire activity he was aware of slid open from inside.

Then it became plain why no vampires had ever used them - there was no room.

Sitting at the wheel of his '63 Citroen, what Xander jokingly referred to as the Gilesmobile, the Englishman could see inside of some of those massive sets of doors, and discovered the entire space within those warehouses was stuffed with bodies packed like cords of wood reaching clear up into the rafters.

Bodies which began to move, streaming out the entrances to form ranks like professional troops of soldiers.

Giles killed the engine on his Citroen and began to stay very still so as not to draw their attention, as thousands, possibly even on up into the millions, of the walking dead formed ranks and units of troops of zombies and skeletons on the streets around him.

Then the equipment warehouses got opened.

Giles just tried to stay very still in his seat as the undead remnants of a Scots Highland Brigade marched past, towing 80mm Howitzer artillery pieces behind them.

Tanks rolled out to form their own brigades. Field artillery got deployed. Roofs got pulled back on buildings he had never paid any attention to before so that emplaced guns inside could have clear fields of fire. Rocket batteries got emplaced, mummies dashed about, running from place to place with their sickle-shaped Kopesh swords out, monsters he had no seen outside of the pages of books stalked the streets, and undead infantry was everywhere, some armed as soldiers out of this modern war or that one, others carrying gear that marked them as Roman Legionnaires.

By the time noon rolled around, Sunnydale had been transformed into an armed camp, the likes of which had not been seen since the heights of heavy fighting during World War Two.

OoOoO

Xander looked down from above on a Sunnydale teeming with armed undead, dug in units of infantry, emplaced artillery, and some formerly innocuous buildings and land features now revealed to be bunkers, with air cover in the form of hundreds of creatures of dozens of different types, and no longer felt that his attack was overkill.

The odd thing was, vague memories were playing at the back of his mind of a time when he was five, and again when he was nine, of just going home in the middle of a day and going to sleep, then dreaming of explosions.

Nobody else had ever remarked upon it, so he'd never paid it all that much attention, but if he was honest with himself, today could not have been the first time that their Mayor had repelled an attack during this war.

Since the man would have to defend himself periodically from attacks, it made sense that he would put spells in place so that the citizens of the place where he lived would ignore the fighting, if he wanted to maintain a low profile.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

When they killed the mayor in the series, it was when he'd just transformed into a demon and gone into a feeding frenzy, a frenzy where he had consumed, among other people, Principal Snyder, who'd always supported him loyally.

The way I consider it, and I think the official show supports it, the Mayor knew ahead of time that feeding frenzy was going to happen. That was why he'd arranged for all of those nice delicious students to be nearby for snacks. But at the same time, he'd put everything he did not want to accidentally eat at a good, far distance away so there wouldn't be any accidents about munching on someone who might be hard to replace or important to him later.

So, for purposes of this story, all of these resources I am showing him to have, would not have been available to him immediately after his transformation, because he would not want to accidentally devour them.

Two other things I want to tell you. One: When I wrote chapter one I filled that shop with the most useless accumulation of junk imaginable. I had plans for only one thing: the copy machine. Everything else was an experiment in just how useless something could be, and then no sooner did I put them in there than I challenged myself to use some of them.

Some of that's gone on pretty well. Every time I come to a "Hey, wait, X has to happen but I'm stuck on how to do it," I dip into that shop merchandise again. One of the first times I ran aground was "Hey, wait, I want them to use this Prodigal Sorcerer card, but they have none of that color of mana," and when I went back and found the paint, that worked so well it was completely cheesy.

But it was unplanned.

Another time was "But they promised Cordy diamonds," and when I went back and found that street vendor's jacket, that again became a staple among their tools.

I took the Book of Exalted Deeds written entirely in Thieves Can't from an article about useless items, which is also where we got the Star Trek phasor without any batteries. And lately I used that princess dress to cure a Slayer of her problem, and invoked 'magical mayhem' concerning the change so I could multiply her, as I literally could not think of anyone who I wanted to share bodyguard duty with her, who wasn't already in a role. But I originally had no plans for any of those items.

I am still flummoxed by things like the guy's living toupee. But at the time I'd thought that pad of receipts and label maker were just as useless, and they have wormed their way in as indispensable tools.

Second Thing, is that my friend katdemon18 has just posted the first chapter of a story about a nonstandard Halloween that I quite like, and would like to recommend to all of you. You'll find a link to it among my favorite stories.


	9. Chapter 9

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Nine

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

Xander floated, surveying Sunnydale for only a moment before a ghostly red biplane dove at him from out of the sun, Baron Richthoffen, the infamous Red Baron, at the controls.

Then it was on.

OoOoO

On the ground, Giles had never seen a trailer for the anime Evangelion, because otherwise he would have compared the rate of gunfire from the emplaced city defenses to that fictional fortress city.

Rockets fired so fast it came out as a continual stream, with the launchers effectively a box shaped hose. He couldn't even begin to comprehend the feed mechanisms that implied, or the buried stocks of munitions that must exist underground to sustain that rate of fire.

All he knew was that the roar of the launching itself was intimidating enough. The devastation on the receiving end had to be unimaginable.

Someone had also taken naval five-inch guns and rigged them for full-auto fire, and they hadn't let up one instant since this madness had started. And there had to have been close to a hundred of those guns firing all at once.

The roar was enormous, a continual crash of a thousand bolts of thunder. If that was actually hitting what they aimed for, that would erase whole armies of tanks as easily and quickly as a man wiped chalk from a blackboard.

Giles could frankly not imagine a demon great enough that it would require this level of fire in response to it.

OoOoO

Baron Richthoffen was a smear of ectoplasm somewhere on the ground behind him, brought down by a burst of magical energy after being outmaneuvered. Xander didn't have the time or energy to spare to care just now, or he probably would have been geeking out that he'd just shot down the Red Baron.

Not a lot of people can say that.

They'd had an honest-to-goodness aerial dogfight. Brief, but no less real for all of that. Guy had even tagged him once in the ribs with a bullet from a 50 caliber machinegun. A slug of very real lead from the bullet was still splashed across his clothes. When he got home and realized what it was Xander would probably have it cast into a medal, or something.

Right now he had too many screaming vampire bats - the genuine, enchanted and evil variety, fluttering in his face to care. The hordes of vile creatures flew as thick as rain up here.

He'd lost sight of Willow, but knew exactly where she was and what she was doing, high and on his left engaging a pair of flying skeletons that she and Mercy had trapped between them. It was like that with everyone.

A day ago a battle like this would have been hellish, a confused melee where everybody lost track of everybody else and got isolated by smoke and monsters to do the best they could, desperate and alone in a large battle swarming with enemies, relying on nothing more than their own strength to pull them through.

Now? Each one of them just knew where the others were. It was like keeping track of your fingers, you just knew. And you knew what they were up to, as well as whether they were injured or needed help with something they were fighting.

Since reading that Flanking For Dummies book Harmony had created through the use of her enchantment-catcher, strategy and tactics came as naturally to them as counting your shoes, and though the battle was chaos, they were dancing through it as though in a choreographed ballet. One second an angel would appear to be in desperate combat with the hideous specter in front of her, then she'd wheel around to cleave in half the phantom pursuing an angel who'd passed just behind her, while the angel so pursued buried her sword to the hilt in the skull of the hideous specter, surprising the monster by this new angel appearing out of nowhere when its attention was so focused on the first.

Angels darted about dodging explosions and assisting angels. Where a black creature had an angel trapped or on the run, most often that was because she was leading the pursuer into a trap. Where always before it had been battles of 'my strength versus yours', now it was more a case where, flashing about to each other's assistance, a monster distracted by the foe before it was most often getting cleaved in two by the angel behind it, with their own efficiency and economy of motion making it seem as though they had practiced those exact maneuvers for months!

Combat, while normally hellish, brutal and ugly, was almost beautiful watching those angels do it. Case in point, a perfect example occurred when through the smoke he caught a glimpse of Harmony off in the distance battling a very yucky phantom, and lodging her sword deep between its eyes after Verity had distracted it. But the glimpse was brief before more explosions from the ground fire struck the duo.

As bad as that was, it could have been worse. Xander and his angels were all benefiting greatly from the fact that nothing could effectively target them. Radar couldn't pick them up. Computers couldn't track them. IR systems did not detect them, and basically if you wanted to find them with any modern tracking systems you were out of luck. Being impossible to target had probably saved all of their lives twice now, in this battle alone. If someone down there had a weapon, they either aimed it at the angels in person using the old-fashioned eyeball, or it got fired blindly into the air, hoping to hit something by sheer chance.

That meant most of it was missing.

Of course, that also meant that some of it was hitting.

Shrapnel splashed across Xander's face, and he was reminded that he'd lost the Protection From Artifacts ward when he'd been briefly turned to goo, as the little shards of metal drew blood from him in long scratches.

He had to ignore the blast, and let it him anyway, because he was close on the tail of a will-o'-the-wisp, and they were dodgy bastards. Any hint of a break in the pursuit and it would have gotten away.

Of course, that shrapnel cloud would have gone right through a human, but he was tougher than that now.

Anti-aircraft artillery was even heavier than over the fleet, which meant that shortly the clouds of black smoke would blot out the sun over town effectively enough that even vampires, if the Mayor had any left, could come out to play.

Which may have been part of his defensive strategy all along.

Fortunately, anti-air artillery compensated for how difficult planes were to hit by exploding in the near vicinity and just sending out clouds of shrapnel to do the job. This worked against aircraft, because their hulls were only about beer-can thick. You can't truly armor something when every ounce counts because it's got to fly. The laws of physics are against you. So they generally design towards their strengths and just work to make them faster and more agile, counting on not being hit rather than absorbing damage.

Best defense: Not be there.

The specters they were fighting up here, like the one Amy had just pursued across his field of vision, roasting with sheets of fire, were capable of absorbing a lot more damage.

There were exceptions, but even the rare 'armored' aircraft concentrated its armor around a few, key systems. And the most armored plane in existence wasn't half as well armored as even a decent-to-poor armored car.

Armored aircraft came to mind, because the Mayor had somehow acquired a good sixty or so Hind helicopters from the going out of business sales of communist countries, and those were among the first considered when armored aircraft got mentioned.

Of course, Xander was less concerned about its armor than he was about the chain guns and missile pods it was doing its level best to unleash upon him. And the will-o'-the-wisp had been doing its level best to lead him into position ahead of those guns.

Naturally, it was surprised when it turned out he'd done the reverse to it. A slash of Willow's sword from out of the smoke cut through the globe of swamp light, and the will-o'-the-wisp was no more. Things specialized in being hard to catch, not formidable once caught, and his angels had dropped about five of them apiece by now. That one Willow had just killed was, to the best of his knowledge, the last of them.

But not nearly the end of their problems.

While that Hind was trying desperately to get Xander within its sights, Cordelia came out of nowhere and slammed into the side of the copter, tore open the door, and flung the undead pilot out by the lapels on his rotting uniform jacket. Then, to his surprise, she took the pilot's seat herself and began to rain down its cargo of rockets and chain gun ammunition upon the anti-air batteries that were making it so loud and hard to see up here.

It took years to qualify to fly one of those things properly. But proper wasn't on the order of business today. She just wanted the thing pointed the right way long enough to pull some triggers, and she got that.

When the rocket pods ran on empty, the cheerleader escaped under her own power, and the anti-air fire sought it out less than a full second later, exploding the copter.

She even started a trend among the angels, who began taking over more helicopters and bombers, to rain their cargo of destruction down upon the ground troops and installations that were firing on them.

Things got marginally quieter in the air after they did that, but it was hard to notice.

The real problem they were facing in the skies over Sunnydale were not the aircraft, nor the rockets or flak artillery. No, it was the creatures. Well, the ones that could fly, really. Most of the ones on the ground, the heavy infantry battalions, the hordes of imp-like demons or the werewolf clans camped out in the hills, they could just ignore. The ones shooting at them were a bit of an annoyance, but not much, really.

No, it was that the sky was absolutely thick with flying defenders.

Xander had just assisted in the kill of the last will-o'-the-wisp. Those had been a real pain, in that you couldn't accomplish anything without one of them getting in the way and spoiling it all. So he was certainly glad they were gone. The vampire bats up here were mostly just a nuisance. Xander had noted three types. Some of the more powerful swarms rated a one-two to his magical senses, but that was rare. Most of the swarms up here were two-ones or one-ones, hostile and malignant but not very deadly when you could First Strike them, and they'd been mowing those down like grass, to the point where limp, furry bodies and cut wings had begun to settle down over Sunnydale as though a coating of black snow.

Of course, the swarms of black vultures that had been blown up early on by the defender's own artillery might have contributed something to that effect, too.

An explosion went off to his left, briefly illuminating an angel unlucky enough to get caught by the blaze. It looked like she had been fighting a ghostly pterodactyl at the time.

It had certainly been crowded up here, although with the distractions of the wisps and bats cleared out, those crowds were diminishing by the moment.

Harmony blasted some swarms with lightning. Verity drew back an arrow and shot a flaming specter through from ear to ear. Artillery explosions caught two more angels and a bat swarm actually landed claws on Mercy, tearing strips down her blouse before Hope coming up behind helped finish them.

A ghostly dragon shrieked as three angels combined to drive swords through its heart.

Xander noted a stray rocket falling on a Sunnydale gas station, igniting the storage tanks and blowing the whole thing into a ball of fire and a vapor of smoke. The only reason he noted it was, with so much else going on, he could barely hear it. The explosion was just one more among so many others.

It was just something he noted as he dove down from behind into the fray where Sophie was fighting with a dozen flying skeletons with their own, tattered and bony wings. They had to fly magically, because a boy wearing a superman cape had more lift surface.

But it was a very magical battle today.

And thinking of that, as he blocked a scythe aimed toward his face, he considered there had to be something magical about being an angel, as he didn't have a smudge or a flake of smoke anywhere on him. His clothes and feathers shone as brightly white as they did before the battle, and the same for the others.

Handy. Not particularly crucial, but handy, he thought as he slashed an undead spine in half, chopped another skull to pieces, then blocked a third scythe to the face. What was it with these undead creeps and scythes to the face?

A second ghostly dragon dissolved into ectoplasm behind him as angels finished it off.

This time he was able to dodge the rippling chain of air-burst explosives scattering shrapnel all over the place. A direct hit shattered the spine and ribcage of one of those skeletons nicely, but Xander had already lost count whether that was one of his first hundred close brushes with an artillery strike, or his fifth.

The sky was black up there for a reason, after all.

Luckily, most of the skeletons up here were three-ones, deadly on offense, which never made a difference if meeting them you had first-strike, which thankfully both he and his troops did. He cut them down, only to find himself in the clear, with no more enemies in sight, and his angels rapidly regrouping.

Then a sudden, awful silence gripped everything.

"The guns, they've stopped," Willow observed in the now thundering absence of noise.

Sophie cocked her head, "That's because what we've been fighting was all stuff they didn't care about if they hit with their own artillery or not. Ghosts, will-o'-the-wisps and specters are all immaterial. Vampire bats can only be harmed by magic or silver, which their shrapnel was not, and the Hinds probably had some serious form of Identify-Friend-or-Foe signal running. About their only mistake was sending vultures into that fray."

"The skeletons?" Charity asked, having fought a few of them.

"No flesh to damage, and the little shards of metal from shrapnel just rattle off magically hardened bone. I know. I saw," Verity confirmed.

"Well, we've taken out their small fry," Amy observed. "And they wouldn't turn their guns off without reason. So we must suppose that their big hitters are about to be rolled out."

"Here they come," Cordy, who had been watching the ground, observed massive doors open on what had been underground hangars.

OoOoO

Giles was certain he'd gone deaf. His head was splitting in the worst headache he'd ever suffered in his life, while his ears felt as though they'd had ice picks repeatedly shoved in them, and the punishment must have brought on his hangover early.

He blessed the sudden silence when it came, as that gave him enough relief to pass out, curled up in the fetal position on the floor of his Citroen.

Today had certainly not been the best choice for heavy drinking.

OoOoO

"I don't believe it," Cordelia stated bluntly.

Xander was having some difficulty himself. At first, it was most surprising to see how few things flew up to greet them. But those things included the Mayor of Sunnydale himself, and...

"On Dasher! On Dancer! On Prancer and Vixen! On Comet! On Cupid! On Donner and Blitzen!" The man was driving a copy of santa's sleigh up to meet them, on which he had nightmares serving as reindeer.

"Ok, that's just creepy," Harmony confessed.

BOOM!

Joyce Dawnbringer flew up to their side, an empty, smoking rocket launcher in her hands, an anti-tank rocket had just struck the Mayor's sleigh, sending him plummeting down like a bag of beans.

"Not funny," the woman declared to the falling politician.

Xander smirked. The rest of them smiled. Buffy's mother had become an angel, because he'd drawn a Reya Dawnbringer card, and, if you are going to empower anyone as a Dawnbringer, who better than someone who brought into being a daughter named Dawn?

Of course, that card had been a Legend, but Harmony had already proven they could overcome that with a bit of blank tape, so other mothers from the sleepover chaperons had been drafted to fill out the rest.

That was when the Mayor began to rise back into view, carried aloft by flying monkeys.

"Now fly!" The Mayor chanted, waving his arms to encourage them on. "Fly my pretties! Fly!"

"This guy is really creeping me out," Amy declared.

Then the Nightmares hit.

~Sixty-sixty.~ Xander thought to himself, blasted back by a double-kick before he'd even realized what was going on. If the sixth sense of his First Strike ability hadn't warned him, that must mean the Nightmares had it to.

When people who both had first strike fought, the abilities equaled out. And a Nightmare had power and toughness equal to the number of swamps that player controlled. So, at a guess, the Mayor controlled sixty swamps.

Xander smashed into the side of a thankfully empty building and rolled through several blocks of more before he'd bled off enough of the momentum to be able to get control and kick off into the air again.

But by then the Nightmare was already upon him, dodging past a dozen angels to follow up its first attack, smashing him down with a forehoof. It hit like the impact of a dozen trains simultaneously. Xander went and made a crater in the concrete when he impacted.

Already up again, he was treated to another double back kick and sent careering off, flying like a bullet through walls of the warehouse district, smashing through a least a dozen, piles of crates included, before he'd lost enough energy to gain control of himself again.

And the Nightmare had already evaded his angel guards and was upon him.

Magic is an unequal game. When creatures went to battle each other there were no heroics, no last second turn arounds, no Hollywood victories. The bigger creature always defeats the smaller. If they were equal, both die. This wasn't a movie where the hero gets beat up for a time, then turns it around when he gets really angry.

This wasn't a lottery, this was math. A two-two creature always defeats a one-one. Always. Magic or funky abilities might get involved, but all most of those do is change what numbers are used, and in the end, it still went number against number, and the higher still always won. It wasn't a narrow victory, either, the lesser creature got completely outclassed.

If you had enough power to equal or beat a creature's toughness, you could take it down, no problem. The only thing left to consider was if you could survive doing so, and that was the same equation in reverse. Was your toughness high enough to take on his power?

The Nightmare kicked him, quite literally, up into the stratosphere, then got there before him and kicked Xander right back down to smash into the streets of Sunnydale again. When he hit, the Nightmare was already there again, clamped his head in its jaws and reared up to bring its forehooves down on his shoulders, intending to tear his head clean off.

Of course, to every rule, there are exceptions.

The Nightmare panted, surprised to realize that its jaw had slipped, and the angel's head escaped its grasp. It's strength waning, the equine looked down to see the puny angel had stuck his sword deep into the Nightmare's own barrel chest, piercing its heart.

"I've got Protection From Black," Xander calmly informed the mare. "There's nothing you can do that could hurt me."

The Nightmare stumbled to the side, weak from loss of blood, then collapsed, revealing sword slashes along both sides, rents torn in the creatures hide by all of those angels it had felt it successfully dodged past.

It might take ten six-six creatures to kill one sixty-sixty, but they could do it.

Xander got up, not even feeling a bruise, and told the body, "We've read Banding For Dummies. *WE* decide how to distribute combat damage among us! And that means all of your rage, all of your power, got focused on me, who you couldn't hurt, while my friends dealt you enough wounds so that I could finish you off."

Around town, the other Nightmares fell out of the sky, destroyed by similar tactics.

OoOoO

"So what happened to the Mayor?" Xander asked as he rejoined the group.

"I dunno," Hope replied, brushing long hair out of her eyes. "When we took on the monkeys they dropped him."

"Did anyone see him hit?" Sophie asked.

"No," came the reply.

"Then assume he is still alive," the angel named for wisdom replied. "After all, the monkeys already caught him once. Something else might have done it again, then carried him off to safety when he saw his Nightmares failing to kill us."

"Agreed," Xander enforced Sophie's line of reasoning.

"Where would they go?" Willow, who'd just served as her own team lead on a Nightmare take down flew up to ask.

"Where is best defended?" Sophie posed the query.

"There," Xander declared, pointing to the heavily warded mayoral palace.

OoOoO

The wards around the mayoral palace had a quality in common with the walls they used to stop armies, in that they could block any number of creatures, even flying ones, and not get damaged by doing so.

His own defense felt a little less special looking at this almost exact duplicate.

"If ever there was a game for lawyers, then Magic is it," Xander mumbled, gathering power in between his hands. "Because if it says, 'doesn't take damage from creatures it blocks', then it ONLY says 'doesn't take damage from creatures it blocks'. So, if you aren't a creature or it doesn't block you, and yet you manage to do damage to it anyway..."

He let loose his ability to wipe out army units from halfway across the globe.

The wards vanished in a shuddering explosion, winking out instantly.

"It dies," he finished softly.

"And when it's already dead from an invoked ability, it can't block us," Cordy cheered, raising her fist. "Charge!"

OoOoO

The final bodyguards as they stormed the mayoral palace weren't all that tough. I mean, after everything they'd already faced, a pack of hellhounds, some succubus secretaries, weren't all that difficult or dangerous to take down.

They understood when they reached the mayor's office and found a few twelve-twelve Lords of The Pit, assorted sorceress and assassins.

"Welcome!" the Mayor got up from behind his desk and extended a hand for everyone to shake. "I admit, it isn't that often that an opponent gets this far. Congratulations! Oh, and I love the angel motif, it's very stirring, evocative imagery." He inhaled deeply. "Hmm! Yes, a good, old fashioned Christian symbol of hope and charity."

Hope and Charity perked up, almost involuntarily.

"So," the mayor clapped his hands together and gave them all a big, campaign grin. "Can I help you with something, or should we go straight to killing each other?"

"I have a question," Willow poked up from the back. "How did you know we were coming? I mean, we lived in this town for years, and you didn't do anything, but the moment we decide to attack, you are ready for us. How do you do it?"

Mayor Wilkins gave them all an easy smile. "What a fine young lady! Well, it looks like I get to give you the newbie tour. That's just swell! Come along! Let me show you the business. First I'd like to introduce you to Anastasia and Druzella, two of my assistants, they are my primary seers. No unfortunate remarks about Cinderella, please."

The two sorceresses so named nodded and got up to have their hands shaken.

"One of the first things any new participant has got to understand is the power of divination," the Mayor instructed as they shook hands. "The key to long term survival in politics, or any business, is to know your people, and keep an eye on the trends. And," he gave a soft and genial chuckle, "among Those Who Would Be Gods, mortal methods just aren't going to be enough. So you've got to invest in the best seers and oracles money can buy."

"The Watchers don't do anything like that," Amy shook her head.

"You'll forgive me for the observation," the Mayor pointed out, "But the Watcher's Council is probably the least informed of anyone in this game. In my opinion, they shouldn't even be playing. They've developed more material means of gathering data, but are light on the seers and spiritual side of things. They can detect a new or potential Slayer, but that is pretty much the extent of it. And that just shows a little league attitude that's not appropriate when you are playing big league ball!"

Wilkins made a gesture of earnest frustration. "Really, if you want to play with the majors, you've got to abide by their rules. It is through divination that any serious powers stay ahead of the game, but the Watchers are comparative novices at that. They just haven't got the attitude of someone playing to win!"

Wilkins made as if throwing a baseball pitch. "So they brought assassins to be their attack force against you, which didn't work so well for them because most assassins are generally not so hot in open field combat against a prepared enemy. What makes them effective is the ability to wait for someone to be exhausted, off guard and vulnerable, then strike by surprise. Sounds like an effective assassination creed, does it not?"

Once again the mayor showered them with that big, campaign-winning grin. "They never would have done that if they'd known you were angels, as you have just never been off-guard and vulnerable like that. So the town is crawling with assassins in the employ of the Watcher's Council, and they can't do much of anything because they simply can't find their targets due to the magic protecting your identities."

"Can't find us?" Harmony protested in disbelief. "We are being attacked all the TIME!"

Wilkins shot her a genial finger point. "Attacks require less precision. 'Enemy that way. Charge!' But to perform a proper assassination, you've just got to know more about your target than that."

After that, the mayor showed them through several rooms and and gave a quick rundown of the talking zombie heads, pools of blood, and one of his sorceresses had very helpfully shown them how she sacrificed a goat to read the entrails, while the Mayor explained that all of these were among his own major tools of scrying out information on the present or divining the future.

"Now remember, don't be afraid to call," the politician told them, concluding their quick briefing on summoning, and the various demons and devils who knew the parts of future and were willing to divulge secrets in return for a few souls.

"I really don't think your methods would work for us," Xander told him honestly. Then he looked at his watch. "Do you think this would be over soon? I don't have much free time and was hoping to use the part of today I didn't spend killing you to marry Willow, here."

"Really?" The Mayor asked with the biggest grin they'd seen on him yet.

OoOoO

"We are gathered here today," The Mayor read from behind the podium, "To join this man and this woman," he indicated Xander and Willow standing before him, Xander in a very formal version of his angel attire but Willow wearing a full on wedding gown that the Mayor's people had materialized out of nowhere, "In the bonds of holy matrimony."

"Doesn't this strike you as a bit odd?" Amy whispered aside to Harmony. Both were wearing bridesmaids gowns, and Harmony had already begun dabbing at her tearing eyes with a white lace kerchief.

"Well, he did have a point in that we did not have another justice of the peace lined up," Sophie whispered back from Harmony's other side. "And strictly speaking, this is the town we all grew up in, so it is his jurisdiction."

The crowd in the chapel was something else, as well.

From simple observation, Mayor Wilkins had learned of their identities ahead of time, and had prepared hostages. So against all expectations, their families were present. Willow's mother and father were over there in a rack and a small cage, respectively. The ghosts of Xander's parents had been raised and bound, with human guards on hand to handle all of the hostages. And, all around them, sitting in the pews, were most of their other angels.

"So, we've got the bride's side of the family," Cordy gestured to the couple affixed to torture devices that were not yet activated. "The groom's side of the family," she gestured to the angels, "and the dead side of the family." She pointed out the ghosts.

"Shhh!" Harmony hissed, quickly swiping away her tears to get ready. "It's almost time for the rings!"

OoOoO

"You may now kiss the bride," Mayor Wilkins proclaimed, and then sighed and shook his head. "And I know how eager you probably are to go on with your honeymoon, but we should probably kill each other first."

"Let me just toss this bouquet," Willow turned to fling her bouquet of flowers towards the other female angels of Xander's harem. The lucky one who caught it was, after tradition, to be the next bride, after all.

It quickly became a three dimensional game of catch as flying angels lunged for it.

"Well, shall we?" The Mayor turned a genial grin on Xander, his demon bodyguards phasing through the wall behind to join him.

Xander gave a firm nod in reply, and the rush of angels towards the bouquet turned out not to be about the bouquet at all (though Charity, the one who got it, did squeal most brightly over that fact), but instead a rush towards the Mayor, slaughtering his guards and each one giving him a slice from their swords as they passed.

Then they ran out of power.

"Well played, young man, well played." The mayor got up, straightening the lapels on his very torn and shredded jacket, and adjusting the cut-off bit of tie he was left with, scratches and gouges all over his face, chest and limbs.

Then Xander simply brought up his phasor and shot the man, who promptly disintegrated with the last words of, "Well, gosh."

"What?" Charity asked around the bouquet a s she caught everyone's astonished looks. "I spent all of last month getting my dad's company to turn out a set of batteries for that thing. It was going to be a surprise ace-in-the-hole when next we got attacked, but I think it made a better wedding present."

"They could actually do that? Make batteries for it, I mean?" Cordy stuttered.

Charity rolled her eyes. "Worse! It turns out half of them are Trekkies. They LIKED doing it! If we weren't worried about other people hiring them away from dad's company, they'd probably have dissected the thing and learned how to make their own starship enterprise by now."

"Alright," Xander turned to face the audience hall full of demons. "Let's clear this place out."

The angels flew out of that room loaded for bear, carrying all manner of man-portable arms, with an emphasis on grenades and rockets seized from the mayor's supplies.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Strictly speaking, the attack failed. Meaning that the angels ran out of power before their target ran out of life.

Of course, as they have learned by now, things don't have to exactly emulate the rules.

Oh, and the mayor referred to this ongoing war as a game, not from any awareness of the cards Xander was holding or the rules he played by, but from an old Sherlock Holmes expression, "The game's afoot!"

Other people, spies and generals among them, also are known to refer to the very serious business they conduct as a game. So, nothing more than a metaphor for the mayor.

Mechanically, Xander attacked with 193 mostly 6/6 angels all banded into one creature, relying on the Trample ability they had received (among others) from Nature's Blessing to allow them to get through whatever blockers got put in their way.

They met and blew through approximately 500 miscellaneous aircraft, 1,000 will-o'-the-wisps, 1,000 swarms of vampire bats, and another 100 flying skeletons all with toughness one. Not counting the dozen of this or handful of that also involved.

Roughly 2,800 flying defenders, or just a little over one-tenth of his overall defense force of about 25,000 creatures (many of which are units of hundred or thousands counting as a single creature, so, yes, he easily had about two and a half million individual defenders, even if those only counted as about 25,000 he could use as blockers).

Flying, they mostly skipped combat with the strictly ground forces. Flanking, which these angels now have, gives -1/-1 to every creature you fight that does not itself possess Flanking, so all they had to do was meet these creatures in combat for them to be destroyed, their toughness reduced to zero. It literally expended none of the attacking angels' power to wipe them out.

Of more concern were the 100 bat swarms that had toughness two, and the hundred or so 2/2 specters.

The accumulated anti air artillery simply did "cause 2 damage to every attacking creature with flying" for the fleet, plus another "cause 3 damage to every attacking creature with flying" over the town. This damage could not be avoided, so they simply soaked it up.

The eight 60/60 nightmares took a lot of killing. They caused four hundred and eighty damage to the attackers (a killing amount, if they hadn't had the enchanted castles backing them up) and took that much to destroy in turn.

A couple of 13/8 bodyguard Lords of the Pit (with Unholy Strength and Feast of The Unicorn up) were weenies, by comparison.

All told, the angels did something short of four hundred points of damage to the Mayor once they'd blown through all of his defenses, and, sadly, he had LOTS more life available to him than that.

There are vampires that, every time they do damage to a target, their controller gains that amount of life, and the mayor had been running some of those for hundreds of years. He had a TON of life!

Of course, most of that he'd traded away to other powers, in order to gain patrons to protect him from other powers in this game. But he still had quite a reserve accumulated.

And yet, in the end, the Mayor still only counted as a very minor player.


	10. Chapter 10

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Ten

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

"There is just something wrong about a man who keep the severed head of Walt Disney on his shelf, asking it questions about the future," Amy declared hotly.

They had all begun going through the now deceased mayor's belongings.

It was something vital to do after the man himself had been defeated.

Without him, the Mayor's forces had simply disintegrated. Minor undead like most of the skeletons and zombies simply collapsed where they stood. Ghosts passed on, freed by the death of the necromancer who'd bound them. The man had regenerated his Nightmares but their power and toughness was linked to the swamps he controlled, and with his death he no longer controlled any, so each of those horrible horses had faded away like a dream.

And the rest of his army had gone into disarray.

Coordinated groups with clear purpose and direction became uncoordinated mobs wandering aimlessly, and more often than not turning on each other. Hordes of demon imps had gone out of control and fled into the hills, wiping out the werewolves they found there, but were weakened doing so and in turn finished off by others also seeking cover in those same dens and burrows.

It was really quite a mess out there right now.

Xander had turned white when he'd learned the Mayor had controlled two hundred Plague Rats, as each of the little one-one rat swarms gained plus one-plus one for every other Plague Rat swarm you controlled, meaning that, with two hundred of them, each of them counted as a two hundred-two hundred creature.

But, thankfully, those couldn't fly, so the attacking angels had skipped right past them. And, with the Mayor gone, he no longer controlled anything. So, united, the Plague Rats were unbeatable, but in the absence of a master to control them and combine their strength they became one-one creatures again, trivial to mop up and annihilate.

Sadly, all sorts of stuff had broken free and ran off on their own. A few hundred mummies had taken off for Los Vegas, no one knew why (although they'd later learn the casino there shaped like a pyramid had acquired a new guard force, rather suddenly, one night). The mayor's cadre of assassins had also split, escaping off when nobody had been looking.

Stuff spreading out over the countryside like that was going to be a real problem.

"You know, the weird thing is, we got lucky," Harmony declared, checking over a vast horde of papers, wearing her reading glasses. "Because most of the real strength of the mayor's army were vampires, most of which could even fly, and Xander just whacked ten thousand of those a month ago, so his defenses were not at their best when we hit him."

"Why couldn't he have predicted Xander's doing that? Going Johnny Storm and whacking those vampires, I mean?" Hope asked, looking up from a chest she'd been going through on her own.

"My guess is the chaos magic behind it," Amy responded for her. "It's very hard to predict."

Mercy gave an agreeing sound. "Yes, it wouldn't be very chaotic if you could simply ask a pet oracle ahead of time what was going to happen and adjust your plans to suit, I guess."

Cordelia, who had entered just in time to catch this conversation, was still wiping goop from off the blade of her sword, having been put in charge of the mop-up operations. "Still, he had a thousand troops with stinger missiles on the ground, and another thousand armed with anti-tank rockets (and a few more hundred armed with flamethrowers). Not to mention all of that artillery and stuff. He wasn't exactly defenseless."

Harmony was calmly paging through notes. "No, I'm not saying that, just that he'd once had more to his defenses than we faced. A key element, the flying vampires, got removed a month ago by Xander going trick or treating as the Human Torch, and Wilkins hadn't had time to replace them properly. We faced a ton of real minor stuff, along with a handful of very, very elites, but the middle ranks got mostly torn out of his guard forces a month ago."

She eyed Cordelia over her glasses. "We got lucky."

Cordy sighed, sheathing her sword and taking a seat before admitting, "Yeah, yeah we did. Something out there the rest of you probably aren't aware of, yet, but the mayor that came up in that sleigh with those nightmares to attack us? We found its body in a crater where it had fallen. It was some kind of double."

"Simulacrum," Amy intuitively answered. Then, when she had everyone's curious gazes on her, expounded, "It's a black spell that makes one of your creatures take all of the damage you would, by making all of your attackers think it was you. They kill it and go home."

A little shiver of distress passed through the gathered angels, thinking how easily that could have been their own response if they hadn't lost track of the falling body.

"Well, it's not exactly like that," Cordelia expounded. "It was some kind of robot, purpose built to look like him would be my guess. Still, it was convincing. I'd never had guessed it wasn't the real guy until I saw the thing crushed or dismembered and had a look at the metal parts inside. Otherwise, it was flawless."

They all spent a moment in thought.

"No wonder the mayor was so surprised that we'd found the real him, and said so few did," Hope surmised.

Cordy nodded. "Well, he's dead now. And speaking of dead, there were a couple million skeletons and zombies lying around out there. Since we don't want anyone to go out and reanimate them, I had them gathered into piles and burned. Some of those bonfires are as big around as our high school."

"How did you gather them together so quickly?"

"The Mayor had trolls running city services like postal delivery and garbage collection. They came out of their holes and started cleanup the moment the shooting was over. Don't even seem to care who they work for. We're in charge right now, so that's us."

"I'll go out and paint them green so we don't get any personality conflicts," Hope nodded, rising from her seat and taking along some paint cans.

"Probably a good idea," Amy admitted. "Black trolls would get up to all sorts of horror-movie things that we don't want anyone we're responsible for doing. I'll come help."

"So, what have you done with all of the ruined planes and such?" Harmony asked as the other two angels departed to go about their work.

"Didn't have to do anything," Cordy admitted with some surprise. "Could have shocked me. But the Mayor's got a bunch of things like santas elves hidden down in this humongous cave network, and they fixed everything mechanical as soon as the trolls dragged it to them to work on. Then they just moved it back to storage in its underground hangars. They're also fixing up the battle damage around town. I gather they do this a lot."

Harmony looked up from her reading, shocked. "Wait! You said this mayor-double was a robot?"

"Yeah." Cordy didn't see the point, but answered truthfully all the same.

Harmony grinned. "And if it was operational, you couldn't tell it from the original?"

Suddenly they both grinned.

OoOoO

"And that's that." Cordy dusted off her hands.

The rumble of the guns had just ceased, and the ground of the valley they'd chosen for this killing ground stopped shaking, although it could be a week before all of the dust settled unless they got lucky and a rainstorm came along to do it for them.

Not a lot of rain in Southern California, though.

Then the dust exploded as newly restored bombers dropped sheets of napalm over the entire valley, burning up everything inside. They'd used the newly repaired Mayor-Bot, freshly reprogrammed to work for them, to take command of the rest of the mayor's undead and icky things from his rapidly scattering ground forces, regroup them, then lead them into a trap where his own artillery had finished them off.

The napalm was just to seal the deal.

A few things ran out of the field of destruction, as there had been some things the artillery and chemical fire simply couldn't destroy. But those the angels could block and wipe out themselves. And they were already doing so, thankful for the opportunity to, as that was much better than the alternative of all that undead just running uncontrolled all over the place.

No, this cleanup operation had just gone a lot better than she'd feared. Very little of what the mayor had once controlled had escaped destruction at their hands. And most of what did, did so only by changing sides to join them. Like those trolls, and machines didn't care who sat at the driver's seat. But there had been a few surprises as well, as the sorceresses and sorceress queens, who'd once been among the mayor's bodyguards were now desperate in their pleas to be painted white.

And they saw no reason not to oblige them. Forgiveness and repentance were both central qualities to the side of light, as was mercy. Just as much as Justice. The real trick to being a good creature was in knowing the cut-off points, where mercy and forgiveness ceased to apply, and justice and judgment took over, for instance.

In this case, they'd pretty much taken care of everything irredeemable, and that which cared to be redeemed, they could work on. Where earlier they'd defeated the mayor, now his army had been almost completely destroyed, effectively annihilated except for a few stragglers who had escaped earlier, or those things that had changed sides.

Smiling, Cordelia let the trolls go about their duty and march into the smoke and dust of the valley to go about their cleanup of the bodies.

Cordy then flew off to get some lunch.

OoOoO

"Jackpot!"

Harmony came into the room where the rest of them were sorting stuff, waving a sheaf of papers overhead.

The restaurants in town had all closed down due to everyone being asleep, but Charity had chosen to make a quick trip, flying down to LA to pick up enough Chinese takeout for all of them so they could both eat and read as they went over the former mayor's documents.

And they were finding all kinds of stuff. The natural caverns under Sunnydale went on for miles, and a good portion of that had been converted to usable space by Mayor Wilkins. Among those things were workshops where he kept enslaved elves working on restoring all of the machines and fighting vehicles he used on a regular basis, another was storage for all of them, but yet one more of the things he'd kept down there was extensive archives.

And Harmony, being the one with the reading glasses, had taken point on that project.

"I know who our enemies are," she declared, and suddenly she held the attention of EVERYONE! Clearly enjoying this, she did not make them suffer, informing them quickly, "Or rather, I found the Mayor's files on who the opposing players are, so now we can know what he knew about them!"

"Which is?" Hope took over as spokeswoman while everyone else was cheering, and the celebration was well worth it, as the single most dangerous aspect about this whole thing was not having any effective information about their enemies.

"Well," Harmony brought the sheaf down so she could read aloud. "In rough order of age, we've got something called the First Evil..."

"There was something about that in the Watcher's Archives we'd copied from Giles," Amy volunteered. "I could go look it up."

"Please do, but later. You wouldn't want to miss out on the rest of this," Hope assured her.

Harmony continued without prompting, "Then we've got fourteen miscellaneous demon lords and archdevils, all collectively referred to as Old Ones. Some toads, some insects, some squids, reptiles or other stuff. No two of them are alike."

"That's in keeping with what little Giles had on them," Amy agreed. "Also that they'd been perpetually involved in wars of conquest against each other, or anything else they could fight, so that part fits, too. Actually, I'm a bit surprised there's only fourteen of them left."

"Maybe those are just the ones who consider themselves in competition for this planet's real estate?" Charity offered helpfully.

"Right," Harmony went on. "Then we've got some guys called the Yama Kings..."

"Immortal overlords of the Chinese Hells, according to that mythology," Mercy volunteered. Her parents best friends were Chinese, and big into that stuff. "Think Hades or Pluto, but Chinese, not Greek, and there were nine or ten of them. Also pretty scary looking."

"Ok, then we've got another demon lord by the name of D'Hoffryn, a Hellgoddess by the name of Horrificus or Glorificus, it's hard to tell by the handwriting..."

"Hell would seem more suited to horror than glory," Hope offered her opinion.

"Agreed," Harmony quipped. "Then we've got a team of demons working together. It says they are too minor, even together, to control any worlds. So they came up with this scheme where they formed an organization of even lesser creatures than they are to do it for them. Anyway, on this world, that organization takes the form of the lawfirm Wolfram and Hart, after the Wolf, Ram and Hart demons that form the trio at its head."

"Ok, demon law firm, scary but believable," Cordelia prompted.

Harmony kept scanning papers. "Then we've got a couple of immortal Chinamen, not a team, it says they spend most of their time and strength fighting each other for power over Asia. One immortal pharaoh, who it says is a mummy and controls most of Africa. An Aztec immortal, another mummy, this one in charge of most of South America. One guy called Gilgamesh, who controls virtually all of the Middle East behind the scenes, and that's the last of the immortals. Then we've got a bunch of secret sorcerers who, while they might not call themselves 'The Illuminati' are certainly close enough in practice, using mind control over just about any world leader you can think of. Then we've got The Watcher's Council, The Mayor himself, and us. And that's about it!"

"Mind control is depressingly easy using magic," Amy sighed. "Xander probably has some cards to do it in that deck of his. Even some vampires can do it. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised somebody saw that as a route to power."

"Are there any names for these guys?" Charity asked.

"Sure! There's tons of stuff, whole boxes and filing cabinets of info on these guys. I just thought you'd all like to hear an overview as soon as I knew what I was looking at," Harmony replied. "It's divided into two sections. There's a room full of filing cabinets and hard drives about the 'other dimensional opponents', and a different one on guys based on this world."

"That again fits with what I'd read in the Watcher Archives," Amy volunteered once again. "Apparently there is some sort of spell or enchantment in place where no supernatural creature above a certain level of power can enter or leave this world. Those already here are trapped here, and those outside can't enter. Something like that."

"Wasn't there a key that could break that enchantment?"

"Probably. I'm not too worried about it, though. Most spells have something that could break them, and this one's been in place for thousands of years. What are the odds the thing to break it would turn up now?"

OoOoO

Back on their island in the Pacific, Dawn sneezed.

OoOoO

"So, what have we got?" Amy wanted to know, after they'd been looking over the Mayor's papers for over an hour.

Cordy waved her hand toward a bunch of arcane paraphernalia. "Well, with these spells and devices, not to mention the fact that we now own the land it sits on, we control Sunnydale, including the Hellmouth."

"Control of the Hellmouth, what does that mean?" Mercy asked.

Amy sank down to a heavy seat in the mayor's leather chair. "Well, I asked Xander that before he left on his honeymoon, and, in our terms, the Hellmouth equals a planar gate - so creatures cost 2 less to bring into play, which explains why new vamps rise so fast here. But also it has a special bonus where activated abilities cost two less black." Seeing the confusion on the newer angel's face, she explained, "If we were playing black, that would be priceless, as it would cut all of our mana costs down to practically nothing. As it is? Meh. We'll keep control of it, but mostly that's only to keep it out of the hands of our enemies."

"So, what else?" Amy did not want them to get hung up on this topic.

Harmony was already flipping through papers. "Well, let's see. The land our former Mayor controlled includes the Hellmouth, obviously, plus vast amounts of deserts of the American Southwest, and a majority of the swamps of the American southeast, plus a bunch of rental properties in towns for rents and things. Also a decent chuck of the deserts of Mexico."

"How did he get so much?" Charity was confused.

Harmony shrugged. "This town's been a murder factory since he founded it a hundred years ago, and he's got a slick arrangement going with several banks where he's been converting victims' cash, accounts and savings into land holdings for a Very Long Time!"

"Why so much land?" Hope asked.

Amy had already figured out that one. "Because he was planning on being a demon lord and ruling this world, so had been buying up parts of it in anticipation since he began this, to make it easier on him once he finally changed."

"What else?" Hope pressed.

Harmony took off her glasses and thought about how to put it. "Well, tons, actually. The Mayor was around back when gold and silver strikes were being made all of the time out here in the West, famous mines worth billions of dollars, and it turns out from his diaries that he simply had vamps enthrall those prospectors who'd made the strikes, pass ownership over to him, then kill them. He's been making a mint. He even owns a couple of the major Los Vegas casinos. Oh, and a movie studio in Hollywood."

Mass blinking all around.

"So, what did he do with the money?" Charity asked.

Harmony shrugged. "Like I said, from these papers, it looks like this guy spent a hundred years buying up all of the deserts and swamps in the North American continent!"

"How many of them did he own?"

Harmony spent a few moments busily checking over papers carefully, and referencing a marked map. "Most of them. By our scale, that works out to about three hundred desert lands, and sixty swamps."

Amy exhaled a huff of air. "Well, that'll be useful."

"What do you mean?" Verity asked.

"Spoils of war," Cordelia declared. "What he owned, we own. The deeds and property rights papers are all here."

"And Right of Conquest is a law older than any currently existing nation," Amy agreed.

"Better still, the little, santa's workshop elves managed to repair the Mayor-Bot again, so we can use it as our front man to control anything to avoid jumping through any complicated legal hoops, because as far as anyone out there will know, he's still in control of everything he once owned." Mercy told them with a smile. She then helped herself to another slice of the wedding cake Mayor Wilkins had ordered for them. It was delicious.

OoOoO

Good could not even begin to express how Willow was feeling.

Something about achieving her lifelong dream of being married to Xander, having friends who were happy for her, a wondrous place to live, it all added up to more than she'd ever dared to dream of!

There was also the little fact that she was an angel. That seemed to make everything better.

The Elfhame Palaces put any five-star hotel to shame. Their tropical islands were beautiful, and having all of these animals about made life seem a bit like a Disney movie, in that if she wanted to, she could walk right up to a lion and pet it.

If they weren't expecting to be attacked daily over the next month she would go so far as to describe life as idyllic.

Right now her happiness had a teeny, tiny speck of discontent in that she was a little sore, having given her virginity to the man she loved, her husband and hoped to be father of all of her children. So they were waiting a little before resuming the sex marathon that each young person fully expected to dominate the majority of the rest of their day.

They were, after all, newlyweds.

Actually, while probably not unique in that, they stood out as having had two weddings on their wedding day. Because, while the Mayor had full legal authority to perform marriages, as angels it was impossible for them to accept a human-sacrificing, would-be demon as having the moral authority to do so. So, they'd gotten one of their angels to preside over a quick, second ceremony right after the first, and this time things went even better because there was no fight afterwards, and the guests did not have to attend wearing torture devices.

So, Willow was feeling life was pretty much complete, when she blinked up at the sky from their room in the Summer Palace. "Xander, did you summon some giant butterflies?"

"No," the young man whose side she was snuggled into replied.

"Then what are those?" she pointed skywards.

He squinted at them for long moments, before declaring, "Parachutists. Skydivers."

"What are they doing here?"

"I don't know."

OoOoO

Something they'd forgotten to take into account was: their island did not have Sunnydale Denial Syndrome protecting it.

A group of skydivers had been among the first to spot them, early that morning. Jumping out of airplanes was a popular sport, and just the sort of thing vacationers got up to, to add spice to a holiday. Since Hawaii was something of a vacation capital, it ought to surprise no one a fair amount of it went on there.

A group of early rising skydiving enthusiasts had flown up into the pale dawn light and soon discovered that the usual islands now had this big, new neighbor over there.

Being up in the air also increased how far a distance you could see, and, well, rather a lot of air traffic went in and out of Hawaii each day. So on their flights in and out increasingly more and more people saw an island that had never been there before.

The island cities floating in the sky above made everything even more visible, though at the same time even harder to believe.

All through the early parts of that day boats and airplanes went out tentatively exploring this new island, circling around what they could not adequately explain, taking photographs and mapping, startled more by the obvious cities and castles they could see there than by the appearance of the island itself, as people could easily make up all sorts of wild theories about how or why a couple of volcanoes could have produced a land mass overnight, and even delude themselves over how it got forested with trees before anyone noticed. But the signs of habitation were harder to explain away.

Although they could see them, nobody had seriously even tried to explain how those four floating island cities were anything normal.

All that morning nobody made any close approaches as the reefs were uncharted, and no one could detect any airfields or even a decent road to land on. Hails were made on radio, only since there was none of that equipment on the mysterious new island that made no difference. Helicopters were being discussed, only it was afternoon before anyone worked up the courage to make a landing - and that was the original skydiving group who had first spotted the island just after dawn, who just decided 'to heck with it' and skipped all of the bureaucratic tangles that were then forming and flew over to make their jump.

What they were *not* expecting, under any circumstance, was to be joined in the air by a couple of angels flying up to greet them, white robes billowing around their tone forms.

"Hello." Xander, wings fluttering behind him, asked, "why are you jumping onto my land?"

"Squirrels, man!" The skydiving hippie, dressed in tie-dye tights and with a braided beard hanging down to his waist, told him. "We're here to check out the squirrels!"

"You'll fit right in here," Xander told the man blandly.

OoOoO

A news helicopter was the next thing to land.

Xander was there to greet them, floating, wings out, robes and halo on, and asked mildly, "Out of curiosity, why did you bother coming when no one is seriously going to believe whatever you print about this place?"

He rather pointedly directed a look skyward to one of his floating island cities.

The reporter, who had never in her life expected to come face to face with an actual angel, was put off her usual mode both by this question and his obvious angelic nature - it wasn't just his appearance, she'd believed before this anyone could fake anything, but there was something about him, a feeling to his presence, that was undeniable.

"I'm going to Hell, aren't I?" she asked, thinking over all of the shady dealings she'd done in slanting news articles in the past.

The angelic man appeared to look straight into her soul for a moment, before answering very simply, "Yes."

"Oh," she shrank in on herself quietly, while all of this was being caught on film and simultaneously broadcast to millions of people by her faithful camera crew.

"Now, now," the angel told her gently, lifting her chin so he could smile into her eyes. "All men are fallen, and are lost. That's why we need Christ, who paid the price for our sins. Forgiveness is free, all you have to do is accept that you have done wrong, regret it, make restitution where possible, and try to do better next time. Repentance is a gift."

He smiled into the reporter's eyes. "One of the central lies evil is always trying to convince people of if once you've screwed up, that's it. You're fallen, lost and without hope. But that is not the truth. The Gospel of Christ is forgiveness, 'though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow'. For most people it's never too late while they live to turn around and do better. Remember: Where there's life, there's hope."

"Someone called?" Hope popped up from behind him.

OoOoO

A destroyer out of Pearl Harbor was the next to make an attempt at landfall, sailing up to within a reasonable distance and preparing to send a boat ashore.

Willow met them as the party of marines and sailors were climbing down off the side of their destroyer and into the little dingy. "Hello, I'm sorry but why are all of you people working so hard to interrupt my honeymoon? Today was my wedding day, and I'd really rather be spending it with my husband. So I'd appreciate it if you did not try to trespass on our land. It's getting very tiresome."

She was, it must be told, feeling rather irksome over the lost snuggling.

One frightened soldier fired a shot off.

Willow caught the bullet in her hand, and though it hurt, it was the right thing to do, as floating there with the flattened splash of lead from the bullet in her palm convinced everyone that further attempts with firearms would be the wrong approach.

She directed a flat and angry glance to the captain of the destroyer. "Captain, your forces have fired upon me." A massive sea serpent the size of a large train then burst forth out of the water behind her, looming up over the tiny vessel like a cat over a mouse, shedding water whose droplets splashed the little crew, convincing everyone they did not dream this. "Therefore, you will withdraw all elements of your country's military from our airspace and territorial waters. Our defense forces are on high alert, having to deal with assaults by the forces of Hell nightly, and will respond to provocations accordingly. Is that understood?"

The panicked ship captain looking up into the maw of a serpent whose jaws were bigger than his entire vessel assured her it would be so, and Willow flew away, annoyed enough to not even particularly care over the fate of that soldier who'd fired a shot at her.

She was lucky she didn't care so much, because the boy was the son of a senator, and got off with just a warning.

OoOoO

"Can you really do that?" Harmony asked, as Amy just signed a contract with the company Charity's father owned to open a development lab on their island to produce Star Trek technology.

The former nerd smiled up to the former cheerleader, glad in knowing the other girl was not the only one able to make brilliant leaps to advantageous ideas. "In one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, the crew visit a planet populated by Prohibition-Era gangster types, with Tommy guns just about the cutting edge of their technology. Dr Bones leaves his communicator behind when they leave. In the final scene, when they are discussing this, the science officer and captain and everyone else agree that those gangsters would take apart that communicator, and figure out how something called a 'transtator' works. They then say that the transtator is the basis of all of their technology, and predict that it is inevitable very soon those Prohibition gangsters would be in space on equal terms with them."

Amy then directed a pointed to look towards Harmony's cell phone, and tapped her own laptop computer. "That phasor we possess has transtators inside of it. And we have an edge over Prohibition gangsters in figuring out high technology."

"So... we're going to have a starship?" Harmony bounced on her toes.

"It'll take a few years. Even if we understood the technology tomorrow, construction alone would put if off for a bit. But yeah, soon we'll have a starship," Amy agreed. "And phasors, and transporters, and all of that other stuff."

"How can you be sure they won't give the secret of all that technology away?" Charity asked, her own concern over that month-long quest to recreate a set of phasor batteries having worn on her.

"Simple! They all get to sign one of these," Amy flipped through the pad of receipts. "Once they are Xander's creatures, we can trust them as well as we can trust anyone."

Harmony snatched the pad of receipts out of her friends hands, and grew a wicked smile.

"What are you thinking?" her friends asked.

"Ooh?" Her grin fooling no one, the former cheerleader confessed. "Well, we have all of those planes and ships and things, and I was thinking 'there's got to be video game junkies or historical aviation nuts who'd like to fly those', and especially against demons and undead. I mean, can you think of a more ultimate adrenaline thrill than actual combat where you can't actually die, because Xander can easily regenerate you? But I put that aside, thinking there was no way we could trust any pilots we'd signed on. But with these?"

Harmony's grin grew contagious.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Well, Turn Two has now officially taken more space than I'd originally intended for the whole story, but oh well.

Also, a word on Xander's deck. When I first got inspired to do this story I did a quick internet search for "iconic magic cards" because I wanted to know what sort of cards symbolized the game to people who'd played it.

I did that because my original thought on his deck was this was not something designed to win, it wasn't even particularly designed at all. It was more or less a random collection of cards, just like an excited child might throw together on first learning about the game.

So that put a lot of things, like Grizzly Bears and Crawl Wurm in, when they are no longer competitive against the new stuff.

One of the things I held in mind creating it was one of my own first explorations of the game, an unwieldy block of what had to be about two hundred cards, throw together with very little thought or reason behind them.

It was also an insanely lucky deck that miraculously kept defeating well-designed ones built carefully by people who thought intensely over every aspect of the game. I never even knew half of what was in there, but always seemed to draw anything I needed, the moment I needed it.

I loved that deck. Sadly, I'd tried to organize and enhance it, and ended up destroying the magic of it. Soon it was losing consistently, every time I played it.

As for cards, I am using 'Approximately anything my brothers own' as the guide as to what editions are appropriate. In early chapters, that meant earlier cards predominated, as they had stopped collecting about a decade ago.

Then a strange thing happened. I started to write this story, and they started to buy more cards. And one of us shows a marked preference for angels.


	11. Chapter 11

Slayer Magic  
Chapter Eleven

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber  
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

At precisely midnight, a spell washed over the oceans, calling forth the dead who slept in watery graves to new action.

Thousands of ships, from ancient Etruscan galleys and Egyptian reed boats through the great galleons and caravels of the Age of Exploration, up through modern hulks of steel ships resting in chunks and pieces on the bottom.

So long as that ship's masters or crew had served evil, it didn't matter how old they were, or their condition, or what their country or nation of origin was. According to the ancient compact, they rose to serve again.

And, with supernatural speed, they all flowed to a single point.

OoOoO

Destroyers and pleasure cruisers of every description had flocked around these new neighbors to the Hawaiian islands. Virtually none of the coast guard or military personnel had believed a word out of that wild story told by the first contact destroyer, and the civilians were there doing what civilians in boats normally do, taking in the pleasure of new sights, boating around enjoying the show, and just generally relaxing in the pleasant aura of normalcy, with just enough odd to feel exciting.

All of that peaceful serenity was shattered with the arrival of the death hulks.

Tattered ghost ships of every description arrived with terrifying speed, disruption the midnight watches and partygoers. Undead ships sliced in and among those peaceful vessels, paying no heed as their heavy wakes tossed them about in great fear and consternation, though causing thankfully very few casualties.

The undead war host had no interest in the military or civilian ships. Their target was on the island ahead. And the undead ships beached on it, unconcerned over their own destruction, for they had met it once before. Keels shattered and ancient hulls crumpled on meeting the island's sand or rock, but it was too late. The undead war fleet had already done its business of delivering the massed horde of ghosts and undead in their holds.

An army of hundreds of thousands of undead of every description waded or floated ashore. Ghosts flying above skeletons. Banshees and specters rushing onto shore alongside of living shadows.

They'd no sooner hit land than Xander's walls flashed into existence, stopping easily ninety percent of their attackers - everything that did not have a special immunity to their walls in one form or another, basically. But where on previous turns, Xander's walls had merely stopped their foes, this time those walls had companions.

True to their plans, the walls that could stop armies stopped everything they could, which this time included all of the flying creatures as well. Hope's concerns about their enemies learning the holes in Xander's defenses had been well realized. The attacking horde represented every type of creature with ability to reach him, with a heavy emphasis on the flying ones, because, presumably, those were the most readily available.

Only this time flying didn't help their attackers to reach Xander.

Banded with those Stop Army Walls were the Life Giving ones, so a certain portion of that damage they would ordinarily do instead got channeled into extra health for him. But also those wall combos were acting in concert with the Cockatrices he'd summoned.

A Cockatrice destroys any creature it meets in combat, and thanks to the specific wording of the Banding ability it was as though the Cockatrices themselves were personally blocking each creature those walls did.

Hundreds of thousands of attackers turned to stone on those beaches and stopped there.

Flying attackers fell and shattered on the beaches, scattering new stones that would serve as pebbles and homes to new sea life as the tides dragged them back to form reefs, and slightly less than a tenth of the attacking force went on.

If that army had been anything but undead their morale would have been shattered in their first steps on that island, regardless of the special abilities of those that remained. But they pressed on uncaring, or perhaps merely unheeding of their comrades' demise.

All that was left had some special protections against Xander's walls, so it got met by other defenders.

Protection From White had formerly made a very strong showing against Xander. However that was before he'd acquired the mayor's air force, and the bunch of adrenaline junkies he'd gotten to fly it.

The angels had been busy recruiting, and forewarned by witches formerly of the mayor's employ, the air force had been ready. No sooner had those ships debarked upon the sand than fighters and biplanes strafed the beaches, pulverizing undead with their bullets, while bombers made runs dropping racks of explosive ordinance and loads of napalm and other nasty substances, shattering rocks and undead bodies indiscriminately - Accompanied by the mad cackling of the adrenaline junkies, finally able to live out their fantasies.

Not even half of the undead force that had survived the walls managed to wade through their own carnage on the beaches to enter the forest beyond.

And that was far from the end of their troubles.

Sophie's four sisters had all been empowered as Karmic Guides, each of whom brought a creature back from the dead as they entered play, and the creatures Xander had grieved most over had been his Ironroot Treefolk, who had loyally perished in desperate battle to spare his life, and they stood again in combat now.

Astonished folks in boats still tossed by wild wakes left by those crashed undead ships had been brought wholly aware by their emergency and looked with some astonishment as the trees on shore came alive, roots and branches lashing to take apart undead by the score, advancing through the horde of dead flesh like, well, animals attacking food.

Which, when you consider that plants consider undead just walking bags of fertilizer...

But that was not the end of the onlooker's surprise, as Amy had educated Xander some in nifty ways to take advantage of cards that have special advantages that take effect when they come into play, and one prime example of those was the Deranged Hermit.

When a Deranged Hermit is created it brings four squirrel tokens with it. But if that Hermit leaves play again nothing happens to those squirrels. They are tracked separate and leave play only according to the requirements of any other creature.

Ho hum, right? What did that matter?

Well, Xander had another card that turn called Arctic Merfolk, which when it entered play could return another creature you controlled to its owner's hand. By summoning the Arctic Merfolk and activating that ability, he could restore all four Deranged Hermits to card form, leaving Larry and his buddies in their original forms.

Then he could use those Deranged Hermit cards to transform them all over again, and this was the good part, doing so brought into existence another four squirrels apiece, leaving thirty-six squirrels in play under his control, all of them five-five creatures.

Better still, by combining the Arctic Merfolk with the Darting Merfolk he'd summoned earlier by transforming that cargo of tuna, he got a set of special abilities where he could summon and unsummon those merfolk as often as he had mana, and return other creatures to his hand each time. So he could call those Deranged Hermits into being as often as he liked, bringing a new set of enhanced squirrels with them each time.

Sadly, being short on blue mana, he'd only run that setup once. But next turn promised loads of possibilities for squirrel summoning on a fresh supply of mana.

Black Knights and other Protection From White creatures simply got obliterated as squirrels leapt from the trees and annihilated them. Onlookers watched in stunned surprise as trees thrashed the invaders, tiny squirrels tore hulking undead monstrosities limb from limb and seemingly ordinary bluebirds dived from out of the sky and all together did almost as much damage to the attackers as the amazing squirrels.

Sea Serpents also surfaced to snatch up whole regiments of undead into those massive jaws, crunching them like so much popcorn before they got out of reach of the water.

And then the Crawl Wurms and lions and antelopes and Grizzly Bears emerged from the leafy underbrush with a cacophony of roars, even the Birds of Paradise got involved in the counterattack, snatching off the odd skull here or there and dropping it out of reach as the other super powered animals slashed apart ranks of the undead troops.

Dragons strafed from above, hovering over the forest on beating wings while breathing fire down below. Gaea's Lieges attacked, wading into those invaders like a football linebacker attacking three year olds. The odd undead giant here or there even encountered a spare Cockatrice or three and froze midstep, immobile forevermore.

An invasion greater in scope than D-Day, and what emerged from that forest around the Elfhame Palace was merely a couple thousand undead, already reduced to a mere two percent of the original force.

What remained contained of a large number of monsters who could not be blocked by walls, the green and blue defenders having gutted the attacking army of every creature with Protection From White they could.

Angels then rose to the defense, and worked fearsome slaughter upon the enemy.

Few of invading corpses stumbled on.

What remained to reach the palace had special abilities to get them there. Some fragments of the force of Protection From White creatures that had survived the slaughter by aircraft and simply outnumbered the defenders in the forest, but mostly it was monsters who possessed the Fear ability, and living shadows as yet untouched by anything, that entered the lawns around their buildings.

Filigree Angels, themselves artifact creatures, played late by Xander on mannequins left over from Ethan's shop after all other artifacts he could play had been played in order to to get maximum use out of their ability to grant him three life for each artifact he controlled when they got summoned, had no emotions and thus were among the few things that could face the mind-bending horror of creatures with the Fear ability.

They did so, stopping the largest and most dangerous ones they could, leaving corpses of mighty monsters splayed out, motionless upon the lawn before the rest entered the tower where Xander stood.

Bianca, the former plush toy Barney, and now their purple-haired bunnygirl, wasn't very bright. When the creatures with Shadow broke through the last defenses the poor dear had just seen Star Wars with the gang, and simply snatched up the lightsaber Willow had rescued from Ethan's old shop, the one that was only light and couldn't cut anything.

Only her first, clumsy, well-intentioned swing proved that assumption wrong, as while it could not cut anything material, the blade of pure light proved perfectly able to cut through creatures made of shadow-stuff, just as cleanly and easily as anything it did in the movies.

Bianca then got cut down by hundreds of shadows descending on her all at once.

As the last vestiges of the once-mighty invasion force began to climb the stairs, there was nothing left that could stop them.

Looking out over this from the balcony in his room, Lady Elizabeth de Summers turned from the scene to where Xander stood surrounded by his core of loyal followers, none of whom could do anything to protect him from the mauling about to be delivered.

"It is time," she said simply, going to Xander's side and removing the phasor from the holster at his side as she kissed him goodbye. Meeting Willow's eyes, she said, "Take care of him for me. Now go."

Seeing the angels begin immediately to shuffle him out of the room and disappear up into the night sky, Buffy then activated the Bodyguard ability, where she began shining out as a beacon to all of the monsters seeking Xander, an irresistible siren's song where they could do nothing but follow the call, directing all of their violence towards her, like a flare drawing away a heat-seeking missile from the helpless aircraft it had originally been aimed for.

She raised the phasor and charged it only moments before slavering creatures out of nightmare burst into the room, despite their terrific losses representing enough power to have scoured England down to bedrock.

Taking aim at the mass, she fired.

OoOoO

"Someone doesn't like us," Cordy observed from Lady Summer's bedside, where they were visiting the regenerated bodyguard, who was convalescing from her ordeal of last night by laying in bed reading a magazine.

Regeneration was effective like that.

The object of her observation was the cloud of alien, insect creatures descending on their island.

"I take it they get alarmed when brand new players are able to remove a more established one," Sophie remarked, having just returned from visiting the regenerated Bianca, only the bunnygirl's experience of being restored from scattered scraps of flesh had thrown them far more curve balls than Buffy's had.

Specifically, Bianca now took up a hundred rooms at double occupancy. Something about the weird effects of mixing magic, but the bunnygirl responded to being regenerated a little TOO well!

A little bit like a starfish, but more so. Instead of every scrap of tissue joining together again into one person, each grew into a copy on its own. So now they had just a little over two hundred bunnygirls.

"You got that right," Harmony chimed in, in regards to the comment about other players in Xander's game being panicked over him having removed the Mayor. "I've been reading those records left by the Mayor for days, and his opinion of the major, established players was they all had a defensive mindset. All of the bold, risk-takers got removed long ago. So a balance shift like this one hasn't occurred in a long time. Do remember this game has been going on for eons - and apparently they don't like surprise new players who do well."

"What does that have to do with not liking new players?" Verity asked.

"The duration or the risk-taking?"

"The risk-taking." Lady Elizabeth put down her magazine to attend this conversation. She was still too weak to do much, but it was nothing a little bed rest wouldn't handle.

"Well, it's like this," Sophie answered on Harmony's behalf. "Spellcasters on Xander's scale are rare, almost unheard of outside of the game that produced him. So most of the players in this contest we got involved in are just leaders of lots and lots of monsters. Now, unlike us angels, when you send a monster out to attack somebody, that same monster is busy for a while, so it's not also available to defend you. So what happens when a bold, aggressive player sends out most or all of his monsters to attack somebody?"

"He's got little or no defense," Verity surmised after a brief analysis, correctly as it turned out.

"Exactly!" Sophie nodded her head, eyes still on the cloud of monster insects approaching their island. "Now in a two-player game, if my whole army attacks and beats up your army, we both are hurting and probably not doing so well, but it more or less equals out, you and I trading blows until one of us dies. But in a multiplayer game?"

Verity thought that over for a moment, before concluding, "The more players there are, the more a window of vulnerability would matter. If I send all of my monsters out on an attack, then anyone else could take a free swing at me, and the more other players there are, the more that would matter, as even small attacks would add up."

"And when there are dozens or hundreds of players?" Sophie probed.

Verity frowned, thinking that through. "Anybody who opened his defenses up like that would be annihilated. It wouldn't even take an all-out attack exposing you completely. Just a miscalculation, sending a couple of monsters too many, leaving you just a little too light on defense, and someone else could mob you, swamping your defenders to wipe you out."

"Only that player could then be wiped out by someone else," Sophie nodded. "Now think of a game on those terms, going on for hundreds, or even thousands of years."

Verity looked up, eyes brightening in understanding. "You'd be left only with players who took no risks at all, people who forted up and used most if not all of their armies to defend themselves, attacking only when there was no risk to doing so."

Lady Elizabeth snorted. "No wonder Xander's all-out angel attack surprised them."

Cordy, whose popularity games had a surprising similarity to something like this, interjected her own thoughts on the matter, "In a situation like we've got, everybody would be closely watching everyone else. No one person in this conflict could afford to take on all of their enemies on at once. If so, they'd win and be king, or whatever. So they'd spend all of their time sniping at each other, and watching out for alliances forming among their enemies. No, I can see how they wouldn't like surprises at all."

"But why would they even snipe?" Verity asked, innocently. "Wouldn't it be better to just keep everything on defense, all of the time?"

"It doesn't work like that," Cordy shook her head, golden brown hair flying. "When you swim with the sharks if you're not constantly attacking, you are seen as weak. Anything weak is vulnerable. Anything seen as vulnerable will have everyone else gang up on them. And if you have fifty enemies, each one of which can cut you down by say ten percent without undue risk to themselves, the only thing that would matter to you is making sure no ten join together, because they can annihilate you. So they'd spend literally all of their time probing at each other for weaknesses, because all you'd have to do is find one good weakness to prove an enemy is vulnerable, then everyone else will gang together to take them out. But you have to do it first, before they can do it to you, or you'll be the one torn apart."

She gave everyone a wry grimace. "High school social life works mostly the same."

"So why don't they get a bunch of friends together?" Verity once more asked innocently. "If they got a whole bunch of friends, they'd be stronger than anyone, right?"

"True demons don't really do the whole friendship deal," Sophie informed her, watching the front ranks of the bug horde fly into their walls and be annihilated, dropping as stones from out of the sky. Thankfully it was far enough out for the petrified remains to fall in the water at about the right spots to grow more coral reefs, which were always pretty. "At most, they can make alliances, but even then they never stop trying to dominate each other. It's like they're hardwired to only accept master/slave relationships. They can make temporary allies of convenience, but even among the ones that work out long term, they never stop looking to stab each other in the back. And the whole thing falls apart the moment they don't think they need each other to survive outside threats."

"That sounds like the Yama Kings," Harmony piped up. "From what I've been reading, the only thing they hate more than each other is everyone else. They are one of the longest established demon teams, but they never stop squabbling and scheming against each other. Against any outside threat they appear as solid as the Great Wall of China. But they keep their own armies and palaces and territories and everything separate, like their own little kingdoms that only band together against a common enemy. Even then, they are always trying to cheat each other in how much they contribute against common threats, hoping one of their allies takes worse losses than they, so they'll have an advantage over him. It's nearly gotten them killed a couple of times, according to the Mayor's notes."

"That's sounds pretty typical of demons, actually," Lady Elizabeth allowed.

Apparently, whoever ran these insect hordes didn't have much variety. Over a hundred thousand insect demons sent, yet nothing got past their walls.

OoOoO

Having an Island Sanctuary did not work out as well as they'd hoped.

Some things that would be near to impossible in a medieval style game environment are trivial in a modern setting. Renting a boat or plane to reach an island was so easy it barely even slowed their enemies down.

Of course, for certain powers, hijacking or stealing ships was even easier, as proved by the boatloads of goblins delivered the fourth night.

The toad demons of the night before had simply walked up out of the water, after having countless numbers eaten by sea serpents and slaughtered by merfolk, naturally.

Goblins can be a terrific force of destruction, laying waste to walls, enemy creatures, artifacts and frequently even land. Every once in a while, when they were not getting incinerated in lava, crushed by boulders, trounced by infantry, overrun by cavalry, pierced by archers or devoured by dragons, goblins experience moments of unmitigated glory in battle.

Today was not one of those days.

Ordinarily the sneaky little buggers would have been all over his island, turning up in the oddest places, getting into everything and mostly destroying it. However, nothing Xander had, excepting only himself, could be targeted. That meant the goblin digging teams could not find his walls to undermine them. Goblin vandals could not discover where he hid his artifacts to destroy those. And, yes, the goblins whose job it was to destroy his land could not seem to find that, either.

It would have been harder to believe if it were any other race, but goblins could be very, very stupid. In fact, they often struggled with the very simple concept of letting go of the grenade before it exploded. In fact, it could be argued that as many goblins had died because they could not grasp that high-yield explosives were not a melee weapon, as had been killed by any other race in combat.

It went without question that goblins killed more goblins than anyone else killed of goblins.  
A race of natural born terrorists, suicidal violence were pretty much their watchword. They didn't care if they perished by droves, so long as they also took out their enemy. They used more types of artillery and war machines than virtually any other race, yet they didn't really care if those machines exploded, or they fired off a few goblins along with the ammo.

Goblin surgeons regard Doctor Frankenstein as conservative. Sewing together corpses of many slain goblins to get one working one was routine for them. The only challenge came from how much of their raw material had died in large explosions, or had to be sifted out of fresh piles of dragon dung.

Kooky mad science experiments were everywhere in a goblin horde. Goblins flew on homemade hang gliders, paper wings they flapped themselves, and other, less sturdy methods. Goblin dirigibles took to the air and war wagons rumbled across streets. Sleds of every description rolled down any sloped surface they could find, even skiing down roofs when nothing else was available.

Cavalry on goats and wolves, chariots pulled by pigs charged up the beaches, and every place you looked, some goblin had a huge keg of explosives strapped to him.

The race got used very much like modern armies used missiles. Sure, you point it at the enemy and expect it to do a terrific amount of damage, but you don't expect to get it back at the end of the day, either.

Flying attackers had done fairly well against Xander in previous turns, and it came as no surprise that these goblins showed up prepared to do a lot of it. Goblin Balloon Teams went aloft. However, the hot air balloon riders had altitude as their one edge in combat, and did not fare as well when the majority of the defenders they faced were also flying.

And this itself proved so distracting they almost missed a real thrust of the goblin attack.

Hidden in among the hordes who were to inevitably perish on his walls were a dozen or so magic battering rams, enchanted to destroy any magic wall they hit. In among the rest of the motley horde, armed with any number of other arcane or kooky devices of odd shapes and sizes, and shrouded by the chaos, noise and smoke of a goblin assault, they were practically invisible.

Being magically aware of the combat situation was the only thing that saved Xander, as if things had been allowed to follow their normal patterns, with his walls blocking everything they could block, those magic rams would have gone and encountered his walls - and destroyed every one of them.

Sure, he could have regenerated them, but that would still have left all of his walls tapped and unavailable until the next turn, popping his defenses open like a can of beans, leaving him vulnerable to every other attack from more than twenty other players.

That would have finished him then and there, unable to stop the overwhelming numbers of his opponents from swamping his paltry few hundred defending creatures.

Goblin war drums pounded as several of Xander's angels desperately rushed forward, breaking ranks and revealing their positions so they could eliminate those battering rams quickly, before the walls went off. A storm of fire, ooze, gunshots and arrows rose up to greet them, while bombs and rocks and other nasty stuff raised down on them from the goblin balloon brigades floating overhead, often detonating on their own goblin ranks below when they'd failed to hit the dodging angels.

Banking around dropped pots of vegetables and climbing over clouds of flung garbage, Cordy led the assault on those dreaded battering rams. She and the angels with her flew through a gauntlet of goblins in a scene eerily reminiscent of the one in Star Wars where X-Wings attacked the Death Star.

And for similar reasons - they had mere seconds to take out a threat before it destroyed all of their safety, obliterating the very people and cause they held most dear.

It was almost impossible to tell how many goblins there were in an assault as the disgusting creatures gave each other the same personal space typical of rats, meaning their teeming hordes would walk or run or climb over each other in preference to anything else, so they came almost as a solid mass of filthy, angry flesh, sprouting weapons.

But the angels could quite literally slaughter them by thousands, and thanks to the pinging, radar-like sense that Xander was able to convey to them, the last-second dangerous lunge to get those battering rams removed was successful, if costly.

As Cordy and her strike team withdrew, the goblin hordes had advanced nearly a half mile inland, burning all the trees and stripping vegetation of every green leaf, leaving only foul puddles of ash and puss behind. But the last bettering ram was gone and Xander's walls snapped into place, flash frying and annihilating the main goblin force, leaving only petrified statues behind.

Dirigibles and other flying machines turned to stone spontaneously fell out from the sky to shatter into unrecognizable bits as they met ground, pummeling the already ruined landscape with a rain of stone while statues of goblin war machines stood in mute testimony to the assault.

However, it was like stopping the tide. Halting it in one place only meant that it advanced in others. Goblin wizards had been used in preparation to this assault to grant vast numbers of the goblin hordes Protection From White, and other sources had even added Protection From Red and some Protection From Blue as well, and those hordes marched on while Xander's dragons circled overhead, unable to stop them.

Then the forest forces rose up to counterattack, gaining vengeance over the devastation of their beloved woodlands already ravaged in this assault. Fangs and claws, hooves and horns coupled with birds and branches met the assault and turned the ground wet with green goblin blood, until it became mud, then squishy with a swamp-like consistency to a depth of several feet as gallons of blood seemingly without end spilled across it.

Yet still the hordes marched on.

Right into the face of a force of very angry angels.

While it appeared at once this would be the end of that assault, as the green defenders had wiped out all their attackers that had Protection From White, hundreds of tunnels opened up simultaneously all over the island, spewing forth a whole fresh assault force and catching the defenders by surprise, goblin sappers having made large forces unblockable.

Lady Elizabeth de Winter calmly stepped forward, pushing Xander out of the way while activating her Bodyguard Beacon.

They would find her later, her torn and mangled body laying in a clearing she'd created, surrounded by fields and hills of goblin corpses, and a dozen empty phasor batteries. But mangled though she was, Xander was able to regenerate her.

However, just as they thought they were finally safe two hundred goblin grenades sprang out of concealment among the fields of corpses and leapt upon Xander. An infamous strategy where goblins with their mouths and body cavities stuffed full of explosives ran to suicide on their opponents. The suicide bombers caused him what would have been a thousand points of damage if the Urza's Armor didn't cut it down to a mere two-hundred.

"And what's worse," Xander wiped goopy green blood from his face with a handkerchief, looking out over the battlefield where mounds of corpses forming new hills surrounded puddles of green blood so wide and deep they qualified as small lakes, "Is that when goblins go to war, if the right enchantments are running in the background, every goblin who falls only gets sacrificed to make their controller stronger - the energy of their dying used to produce even more goblins than died, or worse effects."

Face now clean, he gave his girls a serious stare. "And I felt those enchantments running here."

Amy's eyes bugged wide. "So, no matter how many we killed here, now there are more?"

"Yup."

Sophie looked out over the fields of bodies. Corpses, blood and puss covered their island as far as the eye could see. In fact, that and the wreckage left by the assault were the only things visible. Even their buildings and towers had been buried by the mass of goblin bodies. "What concerns me now is the landscaping catastrophe this is. Because you know all that goblin blood can't be good for the soil."

Mercy nodded. "Yeah. You know if anything grows here, it will be twisted and evil somehow."

Skipping up behind them smirking with her tongue stuck impishly out, Harmony popped open the genie bottle of Mr. Clean.

They all stopped what they were doing to watch in awed astonishment.

Mr. Clean limped back to his bottle, gasping.

"Wow! He did it!" Harmony chimed, leaping into the air in delight, before staring in some concern toward the bottle. "But at the end, he looked so exhausted."

The others had no comment.

"What do you suppose he did with the bodies?" Sophie asked, praying for reality after the miracle of what Harmony had just accomplished.

"Marianas Trench." Xander answered shortly, also staring at the fields that were no longer buried under literal mountains of bodies, and not quite able to believe what he saw.

"How do you know?"

"Godzilla just came out of it, highly looking upset." Xander admitted. "I can sense it as a new, out-of-turn attack."

One of the sorceress queens they'd recruited from what was left over from the Mayor's forces simply pointed her wand, and seconds later they Greatest of All Kaiju had been reduced to the size and consistency of a plush doll.

"Oooh!" Harmony snatched up the new Godzilla plushy. "Lookit! He's so cute!" She skipped away, holding the shrunken monster. "I'm going to name you George, and hug you and squish you and love you and squeeze you..."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Sorceress Queens have the special power of tap to reduce target creature to a zero-two until end of turn.

They just couldn't use that against Xander when he was attacking the mayor, because none of Xander's creatures could be targeted.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
